
Class _, P- VB 6 
Book__'„H_2j:._. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 







OC^C.4^^ 




Rededicating America 

Life and Recent Speeches of 

Warren G. Harding 

FREDERICK E. SCHORTEMEIER 



Formerly Private Secretary to United State* 

Senator Harry S. New; now Secretary 

Indiana Republican State 

Committee 



WITH FOREWORD BY WILL H. HAYS 

Republican National Chairman 



E3 



INDIANAPOLIS 

THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



.HI 



Copyright 1920 
Th£ Bobbs- Merrill Company 



Printed in the United States of America 



mesa of 

BRAUNWORTH II CO. 

BOOK MANUFACTURERS 

BROOKL.VN, N. Y. 



SEP 24 1920 
CI.A597520 



FOREWORD 

Senator Harding possesses just those vital quali- 
ties of mind and heart necessary to-day and in the 
time just ahead. His poise of mind, his soundness of 
judgment, his hold on fundamentals, his appreciation 
of the needs of to-day and of to-morrow, his love of 
the people from whom he came and of whom he is 
one, and his faith in them; his magnificent grasp of 
large affairs, his great native ability and his training 
in statesmanship, his regard for the opinion of others, 
his experience and success in the handling of men, his 
proper appreciation of his country's position as a re- 
sponsible factor in the world's future, but with the 
fullest realization of the absolute importance of our 
own supreme nationalism, his sterling Americanism, 
his righteous character and manhood, and withal his 
thorough humanness, all qualify him in the most ex- 
ceptional degree for the tremendous responsibilities 
which will soon be his. He will make a splendid candi- 
date and a great president. The country will love him, 
honor him, trust him and follow him, just as all who 
know him love and trust him, and the world will honor 
him. 

Will H. Hays. 
AUGUST 1, 1920 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I Warren Gamaliel Harding 11 

II Speech of Acceptance. Address at Formal No- 
tification of His Nomination for the Presidency, 

at Marion, Ohio, July 22, 1920 34 

Constitution Charts the Way — Popular Gov- 
ernment to Be Restored — Repubhcan Senators 
Saved America — Will Preserve American In- 
dependence — To Restore Formal Peace — In- 
dependent Aid to World Justice — To Restore 
Constitution Must Encourage Competition- 
Increased Production Great Need — Industrial 
Cooperation Urged — Classism Decried — De- 
liberate Readjustment Sought — The Railroad 
Problem — Highway Development Advocated — 
Deflation of Finance — Thrift and Economy 
Essential — Agricultural Cooperation Urged — • 
Irrigation and Reclamation — Specific Pro- 
posals — Importance of Law Enforcement — 
Tribute to World War Veterans — Woman 
Suffrage — Confidence in America. 

Ill Safeguarding America. Address on the League 
of Nations in the United States Senate, Sep- 
tember 11, 1919 62 

Nationality Is Paramount — Involvements of 
League — America Essential Factor in War — 
Secret Bartering Unheeded — America's Inter- 
ests Ignored — Nothing Substantial Offered — 
Supergovernment Created — Disarmament Not 
Accomplished — Arbitration Not Assured — Ar- 
ticle Ten Mere Phantom — Fought for Amer- 
ican Rights — Many Peoples Not Heard — 
Avenue to Unending War — To Preserve 
Americanism — Why America Entered War — 
Proclamation of Neutrality Recalled — Forced 
to Declare War — Our Task Completed — Not 
Committed to League — Autocracy of Peace — 
Nationality Sacrificed — American Conscience 
Fixes Obligation — Respect for American 



CONTENTS— CoMfmw^ff 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Rights — Significance of Nationalism — Amer- 
ican Safety at Stake — Patriots Save America 
— Reservations Are Essential — Righteousness 
Is Goal — Must Preserve Inheritance — Must 
Save Soul of America. 

IV Americanism. Address Delivered before the 
Ohio Society of New York, at the Waldorf Ho- 
tel, New York Cit>, January 10, 1920 ... 103 
Birth of Americanism — Constitution Is Sacred 
• — Duty of Citizenship — Must Practise Amer- 
icanism — Devotion to Duty — Back to Normal 
1 — Supremacy of Law — Civil Liberty at Stake 
»— Honest Living Is Solution — Must Preserve 
Nationalism — America First. 

V Theodore Roosevelt. Ohio Legislative Memo- 
rial Address before a Joint Convention of the 
Eighty-third General Assembly, January 29, 1919 115 
Eminent American — Exalted by Americanism 
— Sought Foreign Service — Extraordinary 
Manhood — Man of Action — Awakened Na- 
tional Conscience — Made America Better. 

VI Relations with Theodore Roosevelt. Public 

Address at Topeka, Kansas, March 8, 1920 . . 123 

VII William McKinley. Address at the McKin- 
ley Memorial Dinner, Niles, Ohio, January 29, 
1920 125 

Pioneer of Expansion — American Nationalist 
— A Partisan Republican — Cooperated with 
Congress — Political Parties Essential — Re- 
stored Prosperity in 1896 — Apostle of Protect- 
ive Tariff — His Leadership Is Inspiration — 
Memory Gives Confidence. 

VIII George Washington. Address Delivered Feb- 
ruary 22, 1918, at Washington's Birthday 
Celebration before the Sons and Daughters of 
the Revolution, at Washington, D. C. ... 136 
Founders Divinely Inspired — Developed Amer- 
ican Soul — Duty to Preserve Republic — Advice 
of Washington — Factionalism Decried — To 
Preserve National Rights. 

IX Abraham Lincoln. Address before Lincoln 

Club, Portland, Maine, February 13, 1920 . . 145 



CONTENTS— Contimted 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Duty of Citizenship — Exponent of Nationality 
— America Affords Equal Opportunity. 

X General Grant's Republicanism. Address at 
Grant Dinner, Middlesex Club, Boston, Massa- 
chusetts, 1916 149 

Political Principles Important — Equal Oppor- 
tunity Is Basis — Republicanism Means Pros- 
perity — Need Protective Policies — Sane Pro- 
gressivism Needed — Renewed Consecration — 
Home Production Urged — The Awakened 
Conscience. 

XI Vote on Declaration of War with Germany. 
Address in the Senate of the United States, 

Wednesday, April 4, 1917 164 

Not Fighting in Name of Democracy — To 
Maintain American Rights — To Preserve 
America — Guarantee of Nationality. 

XII America in the War. Address at the Ohio 
Repubhcan State Convention, Columbus, Ohio, 

August 27, 1918 170 

Partisanism Forgotten — Republicans Sup- 
ported War — New Birth of National Soul — 
Republicans Urge Concord — • Investigations 
Prove Helpful — Reconstruction Ahead — Not 
the President's War — Internationalism Decried 
— Democratic Extravagance Attacked. 

XIII The Republican Party and America. Address 
before the Republican Rally at Memorial Hall, 
Columbus, Ohio, February 23, 1920 (Washing- 
ton's Birthday) 182 

Civilization Never Stands Still — We Were Neg- 
lectful — Parties Government Agencies — Dan- 
ger Mark Was Near — Country Wants Formal 
Peace — Why Meddle in Europe — Need Judg- 
ment of the Many — Has No Personal Ends — 
Seeks Stable Ways of Peace — For American 
Square Deal — Dreamer Needs Awakening — 
Must Reiterate Wholesome Policies — Believes 
in Government Aid — Ours Not Ungrateful Re- 
public. 

XIV The Problems of Business. Address before 
the Providence Chamber of Commerce, at Provi- 
dence, Rhode Island, February 25, 1920 ... 198 



C0NTE1<ITS— Continued 



CHAPTER 



PAGE 



Evolution of Modern Business — America 
Greatest Producer — Workmen Not Mere Ma- 
chines — Humanism Sliould be Developed — 
Many Commissions Useless — Too Much Reg- 
ulation — Minimized Production Destructive — 
Collective Bargaining Favored — Increased Pro- 
duction Needed. 

XV The Excess Profits Tax. Address in the 

United States Senate, February 27, 1917 . . 206 
Heavy Tax Burden Necessary — What Consti- 
tutes Real Capital — Looking Forward to Peace 
— Business Should Be Encouraged — Foreign 
Producer Should Assist — Protective Tariff 
Needed — Business Needs Encouragement — 
Washington's Advice Applicable — Tax Is Pen- 
alty on Success. 

XVI Auto-Intoxication. Address before Baltimore 
Press Club, at Baltimore, Maryland, February 
5, 1920 218 

Too Much High Living — Back to the Constitu- 
tion — Party Government Necessary — Heart of 
America Still Sound — Government Ownership 
Opposed. 

XVII Back to Normal. Address before Home Mar- 
ket Club at Boston, Massachusetts, May 14, 1920 223 
Normal Conditions Great Need — Formal 
Peace Souglit — Should Seek Understanding — 
Work Is Solution — Supremacy of Law — Pro- 
duction Is Great Need — Sober Thinking 
Urged — Save America First. 

XVIII The Philippine Islands. Address In the United 

States Senate, Friday, January 28, 1916 . . . 230 
America Has Obligation — Not Seeking Terri- 
tory — No Oppression of Philippines — McKin- 
ley Not Selfish — Honorable Withdrawal Im- 
possible — Commercial Advantages Shown — 
Filipinos Need America — American Progress 
Must Continue. 
XIX Some Specifications. Delivered before the 

Builders' Exchange, Cleveland, Ohio .... 240 
America Prodigal Gift of Creation — Makers 
of America — Honest Building Essential — Con- 
secration to Civic Duty. 



CONTENTS— Continued 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XX The Knox Resolution. Address in the United 
States Senate, May 11, 1920, on Resolution to 

Declare State of War Ended 247 

President Was Warned — Congress Still Func- 
tions. 

XXI The Peace Treaty. Address in the United 
States Senate, November 18, 1919, When the 
Final Vote on the Peace Treaty Was Taken . 250 
Reservations Are Essential — Majority Able to 
Reach Agreement — Treaty Negotiated upon 
Misunderstanding — Minority Did Not Seek 
Agreement — America Must Be Preserved — ; 
Welcomes Decision of People. 



Rededicating America 

CHAPTER I 
[Warren Gamaliel Harding 

Nationalism is the life theme of Warren Harding. 
When the delegates to the Republican National Con- 
vention at Chicago called Senator Harding as the 
party's leader for the campaign of 1920, they chose 
a man whose controlling passion is, and has ever 
been, a complete devotion to America, strong and free, 
sovereign and supreme. As Senator Harding be- 
comes better known to the American people, he will 
stand forth as the greatest nationalist of his day. Ever 
since he entered public life as a member of the Ohio 
legislature, he has thought in terms national. His de- 
votion to the national ideal is the composite of the 
belief of William McKinley in representative govern- 
ment and the absolute Americanism of Theodore 
Roosevelt. 

The Hardings have always thought in terms of na- 
tionalism. For three centuries those of his family 
who came before him were of the sturdy stock which 
early made its way to our colonial shores and had 
its part in the making of America as this country grew 
to be the best expression of governmental individual- 

11 



^12 REDEDICATII^G AMERICA 

ism and developed nationality. The name Harding is 
as old as the Doomsday Book of 1086. Before America 
had its birth as a nation, many Hardings had come to 
cast their lot in the New England colony ; indeed, his- 
torical records show that at least six Hardings came to 
America's shores a century before the Revolution. 
Abraham Harding came to Massachusetts, his widow, 
EHzabeth, settled in Boston ; George Harding to Salem, 
John to Weymouth, Robert to Connecticut — all before 
1650. From the Connecticut line of Robert Harding 
came Captain Stephen Harding, whose son, Abraham 
Harding, was the father of Amos Harding. The latter 
was the direct ancestor of Senator Harding. He 
reared a family of fourteen boys, all of whom bore 
Biblical names with the exception of George Tryon 
Harding, who was the father of Charles Alexander 
Harding and William Perry Harding. Charles Alex- 
ander left but one son, George Tryon Harding, father 
of Senator Harding. 

Warren and his mother were genuinely intimate and 
affectionate. She was an ardent member of the Sev- 
enth Day Adventists and had the reputation of being 
the best versed woman in Biblical literature in her 
community. She was thoroughly cultured and had 
read widely. Persons who knew her well have told 
me that when Warren was a mere child, not over 
seven years old, she said to him repeatedly, **Warren, 
stay with your books and some day you will be presi- 
dent of the United States." 

In after years Warren Harding moved to Marion, 
while his parents continued to reside in Caledonia, a 
small town ten miles to the east. For years it was 



WARREN PAMALIEL HARDING 13 

Warren's habit to go to his mother's home early every 
Sunday morning and the Sundays he missed were very 
few, indeed. By eight o'clock he was usually on his 
way to the old homestead armed with a handful of 
flowers. For nineteen years he took or sent flowers 
to her every week without fail. In the homecoming 
celebration following his nomination, D. R. Cris- 
singer, his fellow townsman who made the welcoming 
address, referred graciously to this tender, weekly trib- 
ute which Senator Harding bestowed on his mother. 
It touched Mr. Harding deeply and was probably the 
most impressive moment of the celebration. The sen- 
ator worshiped his mother and he did not endeavor to 
conceal his heart's regret that she was not here to be 
present at the homecoming. A stately woman, always 
of good cheer, she was universally loved. She was 
devoutly religious and her love for the beautiful and 
the true has made its eternal impress upon Warren's 
character. She died in 1910. 

Senator Harding's father has been granted more 
than his three score and ten years, a kind Providence 
giving him the privilege of celebrating his seventy- 
sixth natal day on the very day his son was nominated 
for the highest honor at the bestowal of the American 
people. His father is a man of strong personality, 
with a kindly good will toward all the world and with 
a disposition characterized by tenderness and sym- 
pathy. He is still actively engaged in the practise of 
medicine. Of course, he has always been proud of 
Warren. In his modest way, however, he has en- 
deavored to conceal his deep satisfaction upon his 
son's nomination. "I am not much excited," he said 



14 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

when Harding was nominated, but the truth is that he 
did not eat anything that day, having forgotten his 
meals altogether. He was just supremely happy and 
nobody in Marion begrudges him the genuine delight 
he so richly deserves. He sacrificed much in his ear- 
lier life that Warren might be thoroughly educated, 
and his son's success is his just reward. 

A typical farm homestead near Blooming Grove, 
Morrow County, Ohio, was the birthplace of Warren 
Gamaliel Harding, November 2, 1865. He will cele- 
brate his fifty-fifth anniversary on election day. This 
American community had already come to fame as 
the birthplace of Senator Calvin S. Brice and Albert 
P. Morehouse, governor of Missouri, and his great 
state, even before this time, had won its way into the 
hearts of Americans as the "Mother of Presidents." 

All that is good in citizenship and honest living is 
the priceless possession of the Hardings. They lived 
the typical life of the early Americans. They did not 
suffer from an over-abundance of wealth, but without 
exception they held the esteem of their neighbors and 
were true to themselves. W^arren, in turn, lived the 
normal life of an American boy in the country districts 
of the great Central West. He was early a leader of 
his boyish crowd. As was the custom of his time, the 
winter months of his early years were spent in the 
country or village school, while the summers found 
him hard at work on his father's farm, or seeking em- 
ployment in the village. Warren was naturally bright 
in school. It would hardly be proper to say that he 
was precocious, but his lessons came very easily and 
he led his class without having to dig; moreover, he 



WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 15 

was too hearty and healthy a boy to study much more 
than was necessary to keep him ahead of his fellows. 
He especially enjoyed grammar, and so it comes about 
that he possesses a remarkable aptitude for the choice 
of accurate and meaningful words. 

As he came to his teens he did the work of the Ohio 
pioneer, clearing the woodland and developing the 
crops. At one time he worked in a sawmill. The 
owner of this mill to this day insists that Warren was 
such a good worker that it almost cost him his life. 
He had been given the task of cleaning the floor near 
a handsaw and was warned not to clear away the 
rubbish too near the saw. Warren was determined 
to make a complete job of it ; he leaned over to brush 
under the saw and in an instant the crown of his hat 
was clipped by the buzzer and whirled to the ceiling. 
The lad came within three inches of never having the 
opportunity to lead his party to victory. Later he 
worked as a laborer in building the Toledo and Ohio 
Central Railroad which was laid through Morrow 
County, and he followed such other pursuits as the 
days might bring. 

While a boy, young Harding is well remembered as 
having ridden the family mule from Caledonia to 
Marion, after the removal of the family from the vil- 
lage to the county-seat. The story is told that on the 
trip he stopped a farmer to inquire how much of his 
journey to Marion remained. The farmer looked at 
him reproachfully and dolefully exclaimed, "Wal, it 
taint so fur if you get off that there mule and walk, 
but if you're goin' to ride that beast, it's a j)urty durn 
fur ways off!" 



16 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

Like most young men who were the leaders of their 
set, young Harding took his turn at teaching elemen- 
tary school, mainly for the purpose of obtaining funds 
to continue his education. He was a good teacher, due 
partly to his genuine desire for learning plus his men- 
tal attainments, but more because of his executive abil- 
ity. He taught the fundamentals very successfully 
and he held the respect and esteem of his pupils. But 
what is even more important, he instilled into them the 
spirit of thrift, of activity, of getting things done — 
and of patriotism. 

When he was fourteen years of age, his parents were 
able to send him to Ohio Central College at Iberia, 
from which institution he was graduated with a very 
good record in scholarship, and the degree of Bachelor 
of Science. It was there, as editor of the college pa- 
per, that he found a liking and displayed a talent for 
journaHsm. "If I have any faculty for the work I am 
now doing," he said in later years, "I owe it most to 
my training as editor of the college paper while a stu- 
dent." His college course was marked by varied va- 
cation employments, not because of poverty, but be- 
cause his parents had taught him the value of work. 
He, therefore, engaged in cutting corn, painting houses 
and grading roadbeds. He was an average farmer, a 
very good house painter and a steady workman for 
the railroad. 

His favorite pastime during this period of life was 
playing in the Caledonia and Marion bands. Despite 
stories to the contrary regarding the instrument he 
played, let it be said here in finality that Warren 
Harding played a tenor horn as a beginner, sometimes 



WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 17 

the tuba when a substitute was needed, and ultimately 
the cornet. Since his nomination he has been made to 
perform on almost every instrument known to a band, 
but his fellow musicians told me that there need be no 
doubt about it, for they all remember distinctly that 
he was a very good musician, regular at practise, and 
that he played the aforesaid horns. His band visited 
the neighboring cities and took third prize in the state- 
wide band tournament at Findlay, Ohio, in 1882. Only 
seven members of this organization now survive, and 
lo a man they declare that Warren Harding was a 
jolly good fellow as a young man, modest, unassum* 
ing, industrious, full of fun, loyal to his friends and de- 
voted to his parents. "And what is more important," 
declared Joe Mathews, who played in the celebrated 
band with him, "is that Warren has never changed a 
bit to this day." 

The odor of printers' ink took hold of him when he 
left college. He had become a hand typesetter as a 
boy, and when the linotype was first introduced he 
learned to operate the machine. He Is a practical 
pressman, job printer and make-up editor. To this 
day he carries, as his "luck piece," the printer's rule 
of his composing-room days. During the Blaine cam- 
paign he was employed on a Democratic newspaper and 
when his Republicanism could no longer be held within 
bounds and he joined a Blaine club and donned a 
Blaine hat, he lost his job. 

He turned to reportorlal and editorial work on the 
Marion Daily Star of Marion, Ohio. The supreme 
desire of his early life was to own this newspaper and 
so in time his father gave him the small financial as- 



18 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

sistance that permitted him to purchase it. The guiding 
spirit of the Marion Star has been, and is, Senator 
Harding himself. Always constructive, always fear- 
less, it has become known throughout the country as 
a newspaper of prestige and power. Senator Harding 
is justly proud of the fact that his paper has never had 
a labor strike or even a threatened controversy with its 
employees. As soon as he was able to put the Daily 
Star on a firm financial foundation, he organized a 
stock company with his employees, distributing shares 
to his workmen so that now they, with him, own the 
paper. Years ago he expressed his conception of the 
relation between the newspaper and the public in this 
creed, written in his office for his office staff: 

"Remember there are two sides to every question. 
Get both. Be truthful. Get the facts. Mistakes are 
inevitable, but strive for accuracy. I would rather 
have one story exactly right than a hundred half 
wrong. Be decent ; be fair, be generous. Boost — don't 
knock. There's good in everybody. Bring out the 
good in everybody, and never, needlessly, hurt the feel- 
ings of anybody. In reporting a political gathering, 
give the facts ; tell the story as it is, not as you would 
like to have it. Treat all parties alike. If there's any 
politics to be played, we will play it in our editorial 
columns. Treat all religious matters reverently. If 
it can possibly be avoided never bring ignominy to an 
innocent man or child in telling of the misdeeds or mis- 
fortune of a relative. Don't wait to be asked, but do it 
without the asking, and, above all, be clean and never 
let a dirty word or suggestive story get into type. I 
want this paper so conducted that it can go into any 
home without destroying the innocence of any child." 



WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 19 

Senator Harding's general business ability soon be- 
came recognized and he was called to interest himself 
in other commercial lines before he entered politics. 
He became a director of the Marion County Bank of 
Marion, Ohio ; a member of the board of directors of 
the Marion Lumber Company, the Marlon County 
Telephone Company, the Marion Home Building and 
Loan Association and numerous other concerns. He 
gave financial support to several new industries which 
came to Marion when these commercial organizations 
sought his business counsel. He devoted much time to 
civic affairs, and became a trustee of the Trinity Bap- 
tist Church, which he attends regularly when at home. 

Warren Harding is essentially human. He has al- 
ways been Interested in the charities of his town and 
has done innumerable acts of helpfulness known only 
to himself and the beneficiary of his kindness. He has 
given financial assistance to more than one fellow 
townsman who had met adversity and in whom many 
people had lost faith. On one of his recent trips he 
met an acquaintance whom he had not seen in many 
months and who was threatened with total blindness. 
Harding took his friend of earlier years with him to 
Washington, placed him in the hands of an eminent 
eye specialist, and was so sincerely happy when the 
physician was able to restore the sight of one eye that 
he confidentially told one or two of his neighbors 
about it. 

Harding's humanitarianism, simple, unheralded, al- 
ways behind closed doors, is one of his truly great 
characteristics, and ranks in importance with his utter 



20 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

sincerity. When I iasked a fellow member of the 
United States Senate what he regarded as the senator's 
greatest attribute, he replied instantly: 

"Modesty and sincerity. Harding's modesty mani- 
fests itself at all times and sometimes to his disad- 
vantage through being mistaken for a lack of confi- 
dence in himself. I have always been impressed with 
this quality in him. Both in committee meetings and 
on the floor of the Senate he advances his views, not 
with an air of finality, nor yet timidity, but with be- 
coming modesty, and seldom until he has listened pa- 
tiently to what others have to say, but he is tenacious 
of his opinions and is not easily swayed from his con- 
clusions once they have been reached. He is as sincere 
as a man can be. I have never yet known him to tem- 
porize. What he believes he says and he does not say 
what he does not believe. I know of no other man 
in public life so little given to dissembling; for better 
QT for worse, he is just what he appears to be." 

No sketch of the Republican standard bearer is com-» 
plete without tender and just tribute to Florence Kling 
Jiarding, his devoted, enthusiastic and very able wife, 
whom he married in 1891. She is his eternal inspira-r 
tion and their relations are as near ideal as could bq 
on this mundane sphere. They are the best comrades, 
sharing their problems in full together and finding 
their happiness in their afiFection for each other. Mrs. 
Harding is a woman of culture, sincere, genuine, and 
always happy. She has lived her entire life in or nea^ 
her present home. Her father, Amos Kling, was ^ 
substantial business man of Marion, and she attended 
the Marion schools. She is widely read and spends 
much time with her books. As a young woman, hei^ 



WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 21' 

hobby was horseback riding; she was a clever rider 
and now is an excellent judge of saddle horses. She 
loves the great outdoors. 

"I can not realize that Warren has been nominated 
for the presidency," she said to me a month after the 
nomination. **It hardly seems real to me." And her 
attitude bespeaks the fact, for she is the same cordial, 
lovable woman to-day that she was five years ago. 
Fully able to bear the heavy tasks which now come to 
her, she refuses absolutely to permit the tremendous 
honor to change her one iota. 

Senator Harding also is privileged t9 ttijdy !he eom- 
t-adeship of three loyal sisters. Miss Abigail Harding 
resides with her father In Marion and is a teacher of 
English in the Marion High School. Another sistef> 
Mrs. Carolyn Votaw, Is the wife of Doctor Herbert 
Votaw, of Washington, D. C. She is deeply interested 
in social problems and is a member of the Women's 
Bureau of the Police Department of the capital city. 
A third sister, Mrs. Charity M. Remsberg, resides in 
California. His only brother. Doctor G. T. Harding, Jr., 
IS an eminent physician of Columbus, Ohio. 

While Senator Harding has always maintained his 
numerous business connections, increasing them from 
year to year, his interest in and ability for things gov- 
ernmental early turned him to an active participation 
in public affairs. He was elected a member of the upper 
chamber of the Seventy-fifth and Seventy-sixth Ohio 
General Assemblies as senator from the Thirteenth 
Ohio District, serving from 1899 to 1903. He had al- 
ready gained a state-wide reputation as a public speaker 
and as editor of his forceful paper, whose editorials. 



22 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

written largely by the senator himself, were read and 
valued throughout his state. He was now an Ohio fig- 
ure and the following year his leadership was recog- 
nized in his nomination and election as lieutenant-gov- 
ernor. Seven years later found him the Republican 
candidate for governor, but, because of a party disaf- 
fection, he met his first political defeat. At that time 
he said publicly that he would leave the political arena, 
but in the short space of two years' time he returned 
actively to politics, supporting William Howard Taft 
for renomination and reelection as president of the 
United States. In another two years' time he became 
a candidate for the Republican nomination for senator 
and in the first primary election held in his state he 
defeated Senator Joseph B. Foraker. This was in the 
spring of 1914. When the votes were counted at the 
November election his fellow Ohioans sent him to the 
United States Senate with a majority of 102,373 over 
Timothy S. Hogan, his Democratic opponent, and with 
73,000 more votes than the next highest candidate on 
the Republican ticket. 

When he reached Washington, Senator Harding 
quickly won the respect and esteem of his fellow sen- 
ators. He had the happy fortune of making and hold- 
ing the genuine friendship of every member of that 
body. From that time to the present it has been an 
almost daily occurrence in the Republican senatorial 
cloak-room for some senator, in the course of a confer- 
ence, to say, "Let's see what Warren thinks about this." 
His judgment, abundance of common sense and 
breadth of understanding are recognized as his most 
valued assets. Senator Harding has a fine poise and 



WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 23 

a deliberate and judicial manner. His friends say 
they have never known him to lose his temper in vio- 
lent fashion and that he always has himself under per- 
fect command. His opinions and views on public 
questions have met the almost universal approval of 
the members on his side of the chamber. They wel- 
come his counsel and he invites theirs. If he removes 
from Capitol Hill to the White House, Senator Har- 
ding can not do otherwise than understand Congress 
and work with it to the expedition of legislation. And 
his lifelong desire for counsel will unquestionably cause 
him to call to his Cabinet strong, able, loyal Americans ; 
to the eternal glory of the republic. 

Warren Harding attends to his senatorial business. 
Relying upon the ability and faithfulness of his sec- 
retary, George B. Christian, Jr., who is greatly de- 
voted to his chief, he has established a reputation 
among his fellow senators for the efficient administra- 
tion of the varied lines of activity which United States 
senators these days are called upon to perform. His 
office has an atmosphere of hospitality ; his visitors feel 
unconsciously that they are welcome ; he is always ac- 
cessible, generous with his time, ready to hear and to 
help. 

Senator Harding is in regular attendance at his com- 
mittee meetings. Several years before he was pub- 
licly considered for the presidency, I observed him in 
committee sessions. In the course of an hour's meet- 
ing he invariably asks half a dozen pointed questions. 
He calls bluntly for the opinions of other senators on 
the committee and relies, to a considerable extent, upon 
their combined judgments in reaching his own conclu- 



24 JIEDEDICATING AMERICA 

sions on the question under consideration. He does a 
full day's work and is busy at his office from nine 
o'clock in the morning until Mrs. Harding comes for 
him at six in the evening, and often then his day's work 
is not yet completed. With Mrs. Harding and his 
devoted secretary, he gathers up in his automobile one 
or more other senators who are "going his way," shar- 
ing their comradeship and taking them to their homes. 

Those acquainted with the official life of Washing- 
ton know that the work of the government is done 
largely by congressional committees. It is in the com- 
mittee rooms that the innumerable vital questions are 
considered in detail and committee conclusions reached 
after many hours of discussion and deliberation. Since 
his election to the Senate, Senator Harding has had 
important committee assignments. During the last two 
years he has served as chairman of the Committee on 
the Philippines. His most important assignment has 
been the Foreign Relations Committee, and next to that 
the Committee on Commerce. His other committees 
are : Territories ; Pacific Islands and Porto Rico ; Pub- 
lic Health and National Quarantine; Standards, 
Weights and Measures, and Expenditures in the 
Treasury Department. 

In his busy career he has found time for three trips 
abroad, devoted largely to a study of European gov- 
ernments and their economic problems, and because 
of his travels his counsel has been much sought on 
questions before the Philippines Committee, Pacific 
Islands and Porto Rico and Territories. His extensive 
business connections throughout Ohio, covering many 



WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 25 

years, have made him an invaluable member of the 
Committee on Commerce. His especial interest in this 
committee relates to the merchant marine, and his ac- 
tivities were signally helpful in speeding up ship con- 
struction to meet war needs. He views the nation's 
commercial problems from a business man's standpoint, 
bringing to them practical considerations rather than 
the theories of the professional economist. 

His greatest usefulness, as well as his deepest satis- 
faction and genuine interest, is in his membership on 
the Committee on Foreign Relations. This committee, 
since the signing of the armistice, has been by far the 
most important committee of Congress, and during the 
war it ranked second only to the Committee on Mili- 
tary Affairs. The Senate Committee on Foreign Rela- 
tions has been charged with the gigantic task of consid- 
ering the peace treaty. The time will surely come when 
the American historian will give just credit to those 
members of the Senate Cominittee on Foreign Relations 
who held firm to the advocacy of an America free, 
strong, untrammeled and supreme in her individualism. 
In this little group of stout-hearted Americans, Warren 
Harding deserves high rank. .He was one of those 
senators who maintained their calm and deliberation, 
who kept their minds clear and their hearts strong in 
the devotion to their country during the unsettled, 
anxious and abnormal times of the war and in all the 
subsequent and often acrid peace discussions. This 
service has been his highest contribution to America 
up to the present time. It is proper that Americans 
judge him by his attitude toward our international re- 



26 REDEDICATING AMERICA ^ 

lations in connection with the war and I am sure that 
he would welcome all Americans in estimating his 
worth on this basis. 

Senator Harding has always been in favor of a 
proper understanding among the nations of the world. 
Pie does not underestimate the awful horrors of war 
and he is willing to go far to prevent future conflicts. 
But he has a consuming passion for his beloved coun- 
try, her safety and her preserved identity. "We do 
not need, and we do not mean to live within and for 
ourselves alone," he said on the floor of the Senate 
during the league of nations debate, "but we mean to 
hold our ideals safe from foreign incursion. It is eas- 
ily possible to hold the world's highest esteem through 
righteous relationships. We are willing to give, but we 
resent demands. Let us have an America walking 
erect, unafraid, concerned about its rights and ready 
to defend them, sure of its ideals and strong to support 
them. Out of the discovered soul of this republic and 
through our preservative actions, we shall hold the 
word 'American' the proudest boast of citizenship in all 
the world." 

He could never bring himself to accept the involve- 
ments which he felt sure would come to America by 
her membership in the league of nations as submitted 
to the Senate by the peace conference. The privacy 
and secrecy which he felt were so conspicuous in the 
peace conference were abhorrent to him. In his 
frank, sure manner of thought and action which has 
characterized his senatorial service, sometimes to his 
political disadvantage, he deeply resented the attitude 
of the peace confreres in failing to take the peoples of 



WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 27 

their respective countries into full confidence. He be- 
lieved sincerely that the result of the peace negotia- 
tions would be to create a supergovernment over this 
country and, so believing, he declared his conviction 
to the people of the United States that he regarded 
this, though unconscious and unintended, a betrayal of 
the country. 

His devotion to America was not a new attitude with 
him when the peace treaty was presented to the Senate. 
In explaining his vote on the declaration of war in, 
the United States Senate, Wednesday, April 4, 1917, he 
said, in his vigorous and deliberate way: "I want it 
known to the people of my state and to the nation that 
I am voting for war to-night for the maintenance of 
just American rights, which is the first essential to the 
preservation of the soul of this republic." That was 
his view of America before the European war was 
dreamed of ; it was his view of America when we en- 
tered the war and it was still his conception when the 
conflict had ended. He could not do otherwise in 
voting on the peace treaty than remain true to the faith 
that was in him. He was ready to go to war because 
America had been attacked, and he was willing to con- 
clude peace only on a basis w^hich preserved his country 
inviolate. He believed that our entrance into the war 
was determined by the conscience of America and he 
thought that the dictates of that conscience should de- 
termine the terms of peace, so far as the United States 
was concerned. 

His absolute candor, as exhibited in connection with 
the peace treaty, has shown itself in his attitude on all 
public questions. To some of his friends, and to some 



28 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

senators, it is almost uncanny. "Warren is making 2 
mistake which will hurt him pohtically" has been the, 
comment heard in Washington on numerous occasions 
when he stated publicly his attitude on questions which 
held the attention of the American people. This aame 
frankness was shown during the consideration of the 
Cummins railroad bill. He voted for the anti-strike 
clause in the railroad bill despite the protests and 
threats that it would annihilate him politically. "If 
the government representing all the people can not 
guarantee transportation service under any and all 
conditions, it fails utterly," he declared, and he squared 
his public attitude with this conscientious belief. He 
has always favored rational unionism and collective 
bargaining, and has so stated publicly on many occa^ 
slons ; for eleven years he has operated his newspaper 
on the share-holding plan with the employees. But when 
the question was squarely put up to him as to whether 
he should vote to permit any one class to become 
stronger than his government, he took his stand, and 
this at a time when he contemplated becoming a candi- 
date for the presidency. Again his love for America 
and his belief that she should be supreme overpowered 
all other considerations, and he said so. 

This passionate devotion to America caused him to 
lay aside all partisan feeling during the war. He dis- 
agreed with many of the acts of the administration, 
but he would not permit his disagreement to swerve 
him in his course in support of a vigorous prosecution 
of the war. He voted for the measure to arm mer- 
chant ships. He supported the espionage bill and the 
selective draft measure. He voted for food control 



WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 29 

legislation. He supported the administration war rev- 
enue bills, opposing several amendments for sixty to 
seventy-five per cent, taxes on war profits in the be- 
lief that such taxes directly injured business, slowed 
down production and thereby reacted to the detriment 
of the American people. He supported the merchant 
marine measure and has always been an ardent advo- 
cate of a powerful merchant marine. He voted for 
the Sheppard resolution proposing national prohibition. 
Having voted for the prohibition amendment, he sup- 
ported the Volstead enforcement law and again voted 
to enact this measure over the president's veto. He 
believed that the time had come when women should be 
taken into participation in the political activities of the 
country and he voted for the proposed suffrage amend- 
ment. He supported the resolution to withdraw 
American troops from Russia because he felt that our 
participation in Russian affairs was neither wise, nec- 
essary, nor American. When the measure requiring 
publicity for campaign contributions was considered, 
he voted in favor of it, against the protests of a cer- 
tain class of politicians. He is a strong protectionist, 
although there has been little occasion for him to ex- 
hibit his attitude publicly in the Senate upon this ques- 
tion during the last five years. He believes strongly in 
efficiency in government, just as he insists upon it in 
his private business, and has long been an advocate of 
the budget system as the proper basis for the business 
affairs of our federal government. 

That governmental legislation will not prove a cure- 
all for the economic and social ills of the day is only 
too well understood and appreciated by Harding. 



30 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

Proper legislation can do much to improve conditions, 
but thrift, economy and simple living on the part of 
the American people is of far more importance, 
Harding knows. "Let us call to all the people for 
thrift and economy, for denial and sacrifice; if need 
be for a nation-wide drive against extravagance apd 
luxury, to a recommittal to simplicity of living, to that 
prudent and normal plan of life which is the health 
of the republic," he admonished in his address accept- 
ing the presidential nomination. More than any other 
public man, Senator Harding has, during the last year, 
urged his countrymen to counteract the fervid anxiety 
of the war and its aftermath, to end the hysteria of 
the day of the world conflict, and to "get back to 
normal." War powers should have been rescinded 
months ago in his belief, and Americans should re- 
turn to their normal activities of peace. 

Harding's face is forward. He Is in entire sym- 
pathy with well developed movements which make 
better the lot of the American people. He has eagerly 
supported such measures as that to impose a high rate 
of duty on imports of child-labor-made goods. He 
voted for the establishment of a minimum wage board 
to fix wages for women and children in the District of 
Columbia. He favored overtime pay for federal em- 
ployees when employed extra hours. He supported 
those proposals which in his opinion were beneficial to 
the American soldier and sailor. His kindly heart and 
his clear, calm mind have given him an admirable grasp 
on the social problems of the day. 

Harding is distinctly a constructive statesman; 
negatives are unknown to him. Consti'uctive meas- 



WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 31 

ures to receive his favor must be able to stand the test 
of experience, must meet the requirements of an his- 
torical analysis and above all must be based upon good 
common sense. When they can withstand these tests, 
Harding is the first to advocate them. The assertion 
is made, without contradiction, that every constructive, 
progressive measure which has been voted upon in the 
United States Senate since he was elected to that body 
SIX years ago and which withstood the aforementioned 
requirements, has had his vote and his voice. 

His advocacy of American nationalism is analogous 
to his belief in the Republican party as a party strong 
in and of itself. He warmly admired William Mc- 
Kinley, who was his good personal friend for many 
.years, first as an American nationalist and secondly, as 
a partisan Republican. Senator Harding is being pop- 
ularly likened to William McKinley these days and 
there is much basis for the comparison. Harding be- 
lieves profoundly in the principles of the Republican 
party as did William McKinley. Speaking of Mc- 
Kinley, he said : "He believed in party government 
through the agency of political parties and believed in 
his party as the agency of greatest good to the Amer- 
ican people. He was considerate, tolerant, courteous, 
but ever a Republican. He did not believe his party had 
a monopoly on all that was good or patriotic, but he 
did believe it best capable of serving our common 
country and its policies best suited to promoting our 
common fortune." When Senator Harding spoke thus 
of William McKinley, those who know him best are 
sure that he was speaking his own firm belief in the 
party of his choice. Harding believes that political 



32 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

parties are essential to the American form of represen- 
tative government and he is the true exponent of party 
rather than personal government. The simple truth is 
that the views of McKinley and Harding upon party 
affairs and upon the basic principles of our govern- 
ment are, to a great extent, identical. 

During the disaffection in the party which began in 
the campaign of 1912, he could not entertain the be- 
lief that it was wise to disrupt the party organization 
and he said so in vigorous fashion at every public op- 
portunity. Four years later, Colonel Roosevelt sent 
for him and Senator Harding gladly accepted the in- 
vitation. They did not dwell long on the conditions of 
1912. Both agreed that mistakes had been made and 
that the greatest need of the country was the complete 
unification of the Republican party. Colonel Roose- 
velt asked Senator Harding to champion a measure to 
permit the former president to lead a volunteer detach- 
ment to France and the senator enthusiastically intro- 
duced such a bill in the United States Senate. He ob- 
tained its passage, but it fell under the presidential 
veto. "If he had lived, Colonel Roosevelt would have 
been our Republican nominee by acclamation in 1920," 
Senator Harding said but a few months before his own 
nomination. 

As Roosevelt was grim and resolute, so is Har- 
ding. The Republican nominee, often silent in his 
determination, takes counsel in abundance, and, with 
it all, reaches his own conclusions. With the com- 
bined thought of the best American minds, he will 
show the way to the Constitution, to constructive 



WARREN GAMALIEL HARDING 33 

American development, to a virile nationalism. He will 
rededicate America. 

His admirers see in Senator Harding a composite of 
Roosevelt and McKinley. "Colonel Roosevelt's name 
will be inseparably linked with the finding of the 
American soul, with the great awakening and consecra- 
tion," he said, and of McKinley he declared, "If he 
were alive to-day, William McKinley would be an 
American nationalist." Harding's every public utter- 
ance has been based upon nationalism and American- 
ism. He estimates American leaders who have gone 
before by these two standards. He has lived his life 
thus far by them and he now goes before the American 
people as a candidate for their highest honor submit- 
ting as his greatest asset his devotion to them. When 
his work is done, of him the historian will say, "War- 
ren Harding, Nationalist and American." 



CHAPTER II 

Speech of Acceptance 

Address at Formal Notification of His Nomination for 
the Presidency, at Marion, Ohio, July 22, ip20 

Chairman Lodge, Members of the Notification 
Committee, Members of the National Committee, 
Ladies and Gentlemen — The message which you 
have formally conveyed brings to me a realization of 
responsibility which is not underestimated. It is a 
supreme task to interpret the covenant of a great po- 
litical party, the activities of which are so woven into 
the history of this republic, and a very sacred and 
solemn undertaking to utter the faith and aspirations 
of the many millions who adhere to that party. The 
party platform has charted the way, yet somehow we 
have come to expect that interpretation which voices 
the faith of nominees who must assume specific tasks. 

Let me be understood clearly from the very begin- 
ning. I believe in party sponsorship in government. I 
believe in party government as distinguished from per- 
sonal government, individual, dictatorial, autocratic or 
what not. In a citizenship of more than a hundred 
millions it is impossible to reach agreement upon all 
questions. Parties are formed by those who reach a 
consensus of opinion. It was the intent of the found- 
ing fathers to give to this republic a dependable and en- 

34 



SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 35 

during popular government, representative in form, 
and it was designed to make political parties not only 
the preserving sponsors but also the effective agencies 
through which hopes and aspirations and convictions 
and conscience may be translated into public perform- 
ance. 

CONSTITUTION CHARTS THE WAY 

Popular government has been an inspiration of lib- 
erty since the dawn of civilization. RepubHcs have 
risen and fallen, and a transition from party to per- 
sonal government has preceded every failure since the 
world began. Under the Constitution we have the 
charted way to security and perpetuity. We know it 
gave to us the safe path to a developing eminence 
which no people in the world ever rivaled. It has 
guaranteed the rule of intelligent, deliberate public 
opinion expressed through parties. Under this plan a 
masterful leadership becomingly may manifest its in- 
fluence, but a people's will still remains the supreme 
authority. 

The American achievement under the plan of the 
fathers is nowhere disputed. On the contrary the 
American example has been the model of every repub- 
lic which glorifies the progress of liberty, and is every- 
where the leaven of representative democracy which 
has expanded human freedom. It has been wrought 
through party government. 

No man is big enough to run this great republic. 
There never has been one. Such domination was 
never intended. Tranquillity, stability, dependability 
— all are assured in party sponsorship, and we mean 



36 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

to renew the assurances which were rended in the 
cataclysmal war. 

POPULAR GOVERNMENT TO BE RESTORED 

It was not surprising that we went far afield from 
safe and prescribed paths amid the war anxieties. 
There was the unfortunate tendency before ; there was 
the surrender of Congress to the growing assumption 
of the executive before the world war imperiled all 
the practises we had learned to beheve in ; and in the 
war emergency every safeguard was swept away. In 
the name of democracy we established autocracy. We 
are not complaining at this extraordinary bestowal or 
assumption in war, it seemed temporarily necessary; 
our alarm is over the failure to restore the constitu- 
tional methods when the war emergency ended. 

Our first committal is the restoration of representa- 
tive popular government, under the Constitution, 
through the agency of the Republican party. Our 
vision includes more than a chief executive, we believe 
in a Cabinet of highest capacity, equal to the responsi- 
bilities which our system contemplates, in whose coun- 
cils the vice-president, second official of the repubhc, 
shall be asked to participate. The same vision includes 
a cordial understanding and coordinated activities with 
a house of Congress, fresh from the people, voicing the 
convictions which members bring from direct contact 
with the electorate, and cordial cooperation along with 
the restored functions of the Senate, fit to be the great- 
est deliberative body of the world. Its members are 
the designated sentinels on the towers of constitutional 
government. The resumption of the Senate's authority 



SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 37 

saved to this republic its independent nationality, when 
autocracy misinterpreted the dream of a world experi- 
ment to be the vision of a world ideal. 

REPUBLICAN SENATORS SAVED AMERICA 

It is not difficult, Chairman Lodge, to make our- 
selves clear on the question of international relation- 
ship. We Republicans of the Senate, conscious of our 
solemn oaths and mindful of our constitutional obliga- 
tions, when we saw the structure of a world super- 
government taking visionary form, joined in a becom- 
ing warning of our devotion to this republic. If the 
torch of constitutionalism had not been dimmed, the 
delayed peace of the world and the tragedy of disap- 
pointment and Europe's misunderstanding of America 
easily might have been avoided. The Republicans of 
the Senate halted the barter of independent American 
eminence and influence which it was proposed to 
exchange for an obscure and unequal place in the 
merged government of the world. Our party means 
to hold the heritage of American nationality unim- 
paired and unsurrendered. 

The world will not misconstrue. We do not mean 
to hold aloof. We do not mean to shun a single re- 
sponsibility of this republic to world civilization. 
There is no hate in the American heart. We have no 
envy, no suspicion, no aversion for any people in the 
world. We hold to our rights, and means to defend, 
aye, we mean to sustain the rights of this nation and 
our citizens alike, everywhere under the shining sun. 
Yet there is the concord of amity and sympathy and 
fraternity in every resolution. There is a genuine as- 



38 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

piration in every American breast for a tranquil friend- 
ship with all the world. 

WILL PRESERVE AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE 

More, we believe the unspeakable sorrows, the im- 
measurable sacrifices, the awakened convictions and 
the aspiring conscience of human kind must commit 
the nations of the earth to a new and better relation- 
ship. It need not be discussed now what motives 
plunged the world into war, it need not be inquired 
whether we asked the sons of this republic to defend 
our national rights, as I believe we did, or to purge the 
Old World of the accumulated ills of rivalry and greed, 
the sacrifices will be in vain if we can not acclaim a 
new order, with added security to civilization and peace 
maintained. 

One may readily sense the conscience of our Amer- 
ica. I am sure I understand the purpose of the dom- 
inant group of the Senate. We were not seeking to 
defeat a world aspiration, we were resolved to safe- 
guard America. We were resolved then, even as we 
are to-day, and will be to-morrow, to preserve this 
free and independent republic. Let those now respon- 
sible, or seeking responsibility, propose the surrender, 
whether with interpretations, apologies or reluctant 
reservations — from which our rights are to be omitted 
— we welcome the referendum to the American peo- 
ple on the preservation of America, and the Republican 
party pledges its defense of the preserved inheritance 
of national freedom. 



SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 39 



TO RESTORE FORMAL PEACE 

In the call of the conscience of America is peace, 
peace that closes the gaping wound of world war, 
and silences the impassioned voices of international 
envy and distrust. Heeding this call and knowing 
as I do the disposition of the Congress, I promise you 
formal and effective peace so quickly as a Republican 
Congress can pass its declaration for a Republican ex- 
ecutive to sign. Then we may turn to our readjust- 
ment at home and proceed deliberately and reflectively 
to that hoped-for world relationship which shall satisfy 
both conscience and aspirations and still hold us free 
from menacing involvement. 

I can hear in the call of conscience an insistent voice 
for the largely reduced armaments throughout the 
world, with attending reduction of burdens upon 
peace-loving humanity. We wish to give of American 
influence and example; we must give of American 
leadership to that invaluable accomplishment. 

I can speak unreservedly of the American aspiration 
and the Republican committal for an association of na- 
tions, cooperating in sublime accord, to attain and pre- 
serve peace through justice rather than force, deter- 
mined to add to security through international law, so 
clarified that no misconstruction can be possible with- 
out aflfronting world honor. 

This republic can never be unmindful of its power, 
and must never forget the force of its example. Pos- 
sessor of might that admits no fear, America must 
stand foremost for the right. If the mistaken voice 
of America, spoken in unheeding haste, led Europe, 



40 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

in the hour of deepest anxiety, into a military alliance 
which menaces peace and threatens all freedom, in- 
stead of adding to their security, then we must speak 
the truth for America and express our hope for the 
fraternized conscience of nations. 

INDEPENDENT AID TO WORLD JUSTICE 

It will avail nothing to discuss in detail the league 
covenant, which was conceived for world supergov- 
ernment, negotiated in misunderstanding, and intol- 
erantly urged and demanded by its administration 
sponsors, who resisted every effort to safeguard Amer- 
ica, and who finally rejected when such safeguards 
were inserted. If the supreme blunder has left Euro- 
pean relationships inextricably interwoven in the 
league compact, our sympathy for Europe only mag- 
nifies our own good fortune in resisting involvement. 
It is better to be the free and disinterested agent of 
international justice and advancing civilization, with 
the covenant of conscience, than be shackled by a writ- 
ten compact which surrenders our freedom of action 
and gives to a military alliance the right to proclaim 
America's duty to the world. No surrender of rights 
to a world council or its military alliance, no assumed 
mandatory, however appealing, ever shall summon the 
sons of this republic to war. Their supreme sacrifice 
shall only be asked for America and its call of honor. 
There is a sanctity in that right we will not delegate. 

When the compact was being written, I do not know 
whether Europe asked or ambition insistently be- 
stowed. It was so good to rejoice in the world's confi- 
dence in our unselfishness that I can believe our evident 



SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 41 

disinterestedness inspired Europe's wish for our asso- 
ciation, quite as much as the selfish thought of enHsting 
American power and resources. Ours is an outstand- 
ing, influential example to the world, whether we cloak 
it in spoken modesty or magnify it in exaltation. We 
want to help ; we mean to help ; but we hold to our own 
interpretation of the American conscience as the very 
soul of our nationality. 

Disposed as we are, the way is very simple. Let the 
failure attending assumption, obstinacy, impractica- 
bility and delay be recognized, and let us find the big, 
practical, unselfish way to do our part, neither cov- 
etous because of ambition nor hesitant through fear, 
but ready to serve ourselves, humanity and God. With 
a Senate advising as the Constitution contemplates, I 
would hopefully approach the nations of Europe and 
of the earth, proposing that understanding which 
makes us a willing participant in the consecration of 
nations to a new relationship, to commit the moral 
forces of the world, America included, to peace and in- 
ternational justice, still leaving America free, inde- 
pendent and self-reliant, but offering friendship to all 
the world. 

TO RESTORE CONSTITUTION 

If men call for more specific details, I remind them 
that moral committals are broad and all inclusive, and 
we are contemplating peoples in the concord of hu- 
manity's advancement. From our own view-point the 
program is specifically American, and we mean to be 
Americans first, to all the world. 

Appraising preserved nationality as the first essential 



42 REDEDICATING AMERICA ' 

to the continued progress of the republic, there is 
linked with it the supreme necessity of the restoration 
' — let us say the re-revealment — of the Constitution, 
and our reconstruction as an industrial nation. 
Here is the transcending task. It concerns our 
common weal at home and will decide our fu- 
ture eminence in the world. More than these, this 
republic, under constitutional liberties, has given to 
mankind the most fortunate conditions for human ac- 
tivity and attainment the world has ever noted, and 
we are to-day the world's reserve force in the great 
contest for liberty through security, and maintained 
equality of opportunity and its righteous rewards. 

It is folly to close our eyes to outstanding facts. 
Humanity is restive, much of the world is in revolu- 
tion, the agents of discord and destruction have 
wrought their tragedy in pathetic Russia, have lighted 
their torches among other peoples, and hope to see 
America as a part of the great red conflagration. Ours 
is the temple of liberty under the law, and it is ours 
to call the Sons of Opportunity to its defense. Amer- 
ica must not only save herself, but ours must be the ap- 
pealing voice to sober the world. 

MUST ENCOURAGE COMPETITION 

More than all else the present-day world needs un- 
derstanding. There can be no peace save through 
composed differences, and the submission of the indi- 
vidual to the will and weal of the many. Any other 
plan means anarchy and its rule of force. 

It must be understood that toil alone makes for ac- 
complishment and advancement, and righteous posses- 



1 



SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 43 

sion is the reward of toil, and its incentive. There is 
no progress except in the stimulus of competition. 
When competition — natural, fair, impelling competi- 
tion — is suppressed, whether by law, compact or con- 
spiracy, we halt the march of progress, silence the 
voice of aspiration, and paralyze the will for achieve- 
ment. These are but common-sense truths of human 
development. 

The chief trouble to-day is that the world war 
wrought the destruction of healthful competition, left 
our storehouses empty, and there is a minimum pro- 
duction when our need is maximum. Maximums, not 
minimums, is the call of America. It isn't a new story, 
because war never fails to leave depleted storehouses 
and always impairs the efficiency of production. War 
also establishes its higher standards for wages, and 
they abide. I wish the higher wage to abide, on one 
explicit condition — that the wage-earner will give full 
return for the wage received. It is the best assurance 
we can have for a reduced cost of living. Mark you, 
I am ready to acclaim the highest standard of pay, 
but I would be blind to the responsibilities that mark 
this fateful hour if I did not caution the wage-earners 
of America that mounting wages and decreased pro- 
duction can lead only to industrial and economic ruin. 

INCREASED PRODUCTION GREAT NEED 

I want, somehow, to appeal to the sons and daugh- 
ters of the republic, to every producer, to join hand 
and brain in production, more production, honest pro- 
duction, patriotic production, because patriotic pro- 
duction is no less a defense of our best civilization than 



44 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

that of armed force. Profiteering is a crime of com- 
mission, under-production is a crime of omission. We 
must work our most and best, else the destructive re- 
action will come. We must stabilize and strive for 
normalcy, else the inevitable reaction will bring its 
train of sufferings, disappointments and reversals. We 
want to forestall such reaction, we want to hold all 
advanced ground, and fortify it with general good- 
fortune. 

Let us return for a moment to the necessity for un- 
derstanding, particularly that understanding which 
concerns ourselves at home. I decline to recognize any 
conflict of interest among the participants in industry. 
The destruction of one is the ruin of the other, the 
suspicion or rebellion of one unavoidably involves the 
other. In conflict is disaster, in understanding there 
is triumph. There is no issue relating to the founda- 
tion on which industry is builded, because industry is 
bigger than any element in its modern making. But 
the insistent call is for labor, management and capital 
to reach understanding. 

INDUSTRIAL COOPERATION URGED 

The human element comes first, and I want the em- 
ployers in industry to understand the aspirations, the 
convictions, the yearnings of the millions of American 
wage-earners, and I want the wage-earners to under- 
stand the problems, the anxieties, the obligations of 
management and capital, and all of them must under- 
stand their relationship to the people and their obliga- 
tion to the republic. Out of this understanding will 
come the unanimous committal to economic justice, 



SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 45 

and in economic justice lies that social justice which 
is the highest essential to human happiness. 

I am speaking as one who has counted the contents 
of the pay envelope from the view-point of the earner 
as well as the employer. No one pretends to deny the 
inequalities which are manifest in modern industrial 
life. They are less in fact than they were before or- 
ganization and grouping on either side revealed the 
inequalities, and conscience has wrought more justice 
than statutes have compelled, but the ferment of the 
world rivets our thoughts on the necessity of progres- 
sive solution, else our generation will suffer the experi- 
ment which means chaos for our day to reestablish 
God's plan for the great to-morrow. 

Speaking our sympathies, uttering the conscience of 
all the people, mindful of our right to dwell amid the 
good fortunes of rational, conscience-impelled ad- 
vancement, we hold the majesty of righteous govern- 
ment, with liberty under the law, to be our avoidance 
of chaos, and we call upon every citizen of the republic 
to hold fast to that which made us what we are, and 
we will have orderly government safeguard the on- 
ward march to all we ought to be. 

CLASSISM DECRIED 

The menacing tendency of the present day is not 
chargeable wholly to the unsettled and fevered condi- 
tions caused by the war. The manifest weakness in 
popular government lies in the temptation to appeal to 
grouped citizenship for political advantage. There is 
no greater peril. The Constitution contemplates no 
class and recognizes no group. It broadly includes all 



46 REDEDICATING AMERICA . 

the people, with specific recognition for none, and the 
highest consecration we can make to-day is a commit- 
tal of the Republican party to that saving constitution- 
alism which contemplates all America as one people, 
and holds just government free from influence on the 
one hand and unmoved by intimidation on the other. 

It would be the blindness of folly to ignore the ac- 
tivities in our own country which are aimed to destroy 
our economic system, and to commit us to the colossal 
tragedy which has both destroyed all freedom and 
made Russia impotent. This movement is not to be 
halted in throttled liberties. We must not abridge the 
freedom of speech, the freedom of press, or the free- 
dom of assembly, because there is no promise in re- 
pression. These liberties are as sacred as the freedom 
of religious belief, as inviolable as the rights of life 
and the pursuit of happiness. We do hold to the right 
to crush sedition, to stifle a menacing contempt for 
law, to stamp out a peril to the safety of the republic 
or its people, when emergency calls, because security 
and the majesty of the law are the first essentials of 
liberty. He who threatens destruction of the govern- 
ment by force or flaunts his contempt for lawful au- 
thority ceases to be a loyal citizen and forfeits his 
rights to the freedom of the republic. 

DELIBERATE READJUSTMENT SOUGHT 

Let it be said to all of America that our plan of pop- 
ular government contemplates such orderly changes 
as the crystallized intelligence of the majority of our 
people think best. There can be no modification of 
this underlying rule, but no majority shall abridge the 



SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 47 

rights of a minority. Men have a right to question our 
system in fullest freedom, but they must always re- 
member that the rights of freedom impose the obliga- 
tions which maintain it. Our policy is not of re- 
pression, but we make appeal to-day to American 
intelligence and patriotism, when the republic is men- 
aced from within, just as we trusted American pa- 
triotism when our rights were threatened from without. 
We call on all America for steadiness, so that we 
may proceed deliberately to the readjustment which 
concerns all the people. Our party platform fairly ex- 
presses the conscience of Republicans on industrial re- 
lations. No party is indifferent to the welfare of the 
wage-earner. To us his good fortune is of deepest 
concern, and we seek to make that good fortune per- 
manent. We do not oppose but approve collective bar- 
gaining, because that is an outstanding right, but we 
are unalterably insistent that its exercise must not de- 
stroy the equally sacred right of the individual, in his 
necessary pursuit of livelihood. Any American has 
the right to quit his employment, so has every Ameri- 
can the right to seek employment. The group must 
not endanger the individual, and we must discourage 
groups preying upon one another, and none shall be al- 
lowed to forget that government's obligations are 
alike to all the people. 

THE RAILROAD PROBLEM 

I hope we may do more than merely discourage the 
losses and sufferings attending industrial conflict. The 
strike against the government is properly denied, for 
government service involves none of the elements of 



48 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

profit which relate to competitive enterprise. There 
is progress in the estabUshment of official revealment 
of issues and conditions which lead to conflict, so that 
unerring public sentiment may speed the adjustment, 
but I hope for that concord of purpose, not forced but 
inspired by the common weal, which will give a regu- 
lated public service the fullest guaranty of continuity. 
I am thinking of the railroads. In modern life they 
are the very base of all our activities and interchanges. 
For public protection we have enacted laws providing 
for a regulation of the charge for service, a limitation 
on the capital invested and a limitation on capitaFs 
earnings. There remains only competition of service 
on which to base our hopes for an efficiency and ex- 
pansion which meet our modern requirements. The 
railway workmen ought to be the best paid and know 
the best working conditions in the world. Theirs is 
an exceptional responsibility. They are not only es- 
sential to the life and health of all productive activities 
of the people, but they are directly responsible for the 
safety of traveling millions. The government which 
has assumed so much authority for the public good 
might well stamp railway employment with the sanc- 
tity of public service and guarantee to the railway em- 
ployees that justice which voices the American con- 
ception of righteousness on the one hand, and assure 
continuity of service on the other. 

The importance of the railway rehabilitation is so 
obvious that reference seems uncalled for. We are so 
confident that much of the present-day insufficiency 
and inefficiency of transportation are due to the wither- 
ing hand of government operation that we emphasize 



SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 49 

anew our opposition to government ownership, we 
want to expedite the reparation, and make sure the 
mistake is not repeated. 

It is little use to recite the story of development, ex- 
ploitation, government experiment and its neglect, gov- 
ernment operation and its failures. The inadequacy 
of trackage and terminal facilities, the insufficiency of 
equipment and the inefficiency of operation all bear 
the blighting stamp of governmental incapacity during 
federal operation. The work of rehabilitation under 
the restoration of private ownership deserves our best 
encouragement. Billions are needed in new equip- 
ment, not alone to meet the growing demand for serv- 
ice, but to restore the extraordinary depreciation due 
to the strained service of war. With restricted earn- 
ings and with speculative profits removed, railway 
activities have come to the realm of conservative and 
constructive service, and the government which im- 
paired must play its part in restoration. Manifestly 
the returns must be so gauged that necessary capital 
may be enlisted, and we must foster as well as re- 
strain. 

We have no more pressing problem. A state of in- 
adequate transportation facilities, mainly chargeable 
to the failure of governmental experiment, is losing 
millions to agriculture, it is hindering industry, it is 
menacing the American people with a fuel shortage 
little less than a peril. It emphasizes the present-day 
problem and suggests that spirit of encouragement and 
assistance which commits all America to relieve such 
an emergency. 



50 REDEDICATING AMERICA 



HIGHWAY DEVELOPMENT ADVOCATED 

The one compensation amid attending anxieties is 
our new and needed realization of the vital part trans- 
portation plays in the complexities of modern life. We 
are not to think of rails alone, but highways from 
farm to market, from railway to farm, arteries of life- 
blood to present-day life, the quickened ways to com- 
munication and exchange, the answer of our people 
to the motor age. We believe in generous federal co- 
operation in construction, linked with assurances of 
maintenance that will put an end to criminal waste of 
public funds on the one hand and give a guaranty of 
upkept highways on the other. 

Water transportation is inseparably linked with ad- 
equacy of facilities, and we favor American eminence 
on the seas, the practical development of inland water- 
ways, the upbuilding and coordination of all to make 
them equal to and ready for every call of developing 
and widening American commerce. I like that recom- 
mittal to thoughts of America first which pledges the 
Panama Canal, an American creation, to the free use 
of American shipping. It will add to the American 
reawakening. 

One can not speak of industry and commerce, and 
the transportation on which they are dependent, with- 
out an earnest thought of the abnormal cost of living 
and the problems in its wake. It is easy to inveigh, 
but that avails nothing. And it is far too serious to 
dismiss with flaming but futile promise. 

Eight years ago, in times of peace, the Democratic 
party made it an issue, and when clothed with power 



SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 51 

that party came near to its accomplishment by destroy- 
ing the people's capacity to buy. But that was a cure 
worse than the ailment. It is easy to understand the 
real causes, after which the patient must help to effect 
his own cure. 

DEFLATION OF FINANCE 

Gross expansion of currency and credit have de- 
preciated the dollar just as expansion and inflation 
have discredited the coins of the world. We inflated 
in haste, we must deflate in deliberation. We debased 
the dollar in reckless finance, we must restore in hon- 
esty. Deflation on the one hand and restoration of the 
one-hundred-cent dollar on the other ought to have 
begun on the day after the armistice, but plans were 
lacking or courage failed. The unpreparedness for 
peace was little less costly than unpreparedness for 
war. 

We can promise no one remedy which will cure an 
ill of such wide proportions, but we do pledge that ear- 
nest and consistent attack which the party platform 
covenants. We will attempt intelligent and courageous 
deflation, and strike at government borrowing which 
enlarges the evil, and we will attack high cost of gov- 
ernment with every energy and facility which attend 
Republican capacity. We promise that relief which will 
attend the halting of waste and extravagance, and the 
renewal of the practise of public economy, not alone 
because it will relieve tax burdens but because it will 
be an example to stimulate thrift and economy in pri- 
vate Hfe. 

I have already alluded to the necessity for the ful- 



52 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

ness of production, and we need the fulness of service 
which attends the exchange of products. Let us speak 
the irrefutable truth, high wages and reduced cost of 
living are in utter contradiction unless we have the 
height of efficiency for wages received. 

In all sincerity we promise the prevention of un- 
reasonable profits, we challenge profiteering with all 
the moral force and the legal powers of government 
and people, but it is fair, aye, it is timely, to give re- 
minder that law is not the sole corrective of our eco- 
nomic ills. 

THRIFT AND ECONOMY ESSENTIAL 

Let us call to all the people for thrift and economy, 
for denial and sacrifice if need be, for a nation-wide 
drive against extravagance and luxury, to a recommit- 
tal to simplicity of living, to that prudent and normal 
plan of life which is the health of the republic. There 
hasn't been a recovery from the waste and abnor- 
malities of war since the story of mankind was first 
written, except through work and saving, through in- 
dustry and denial, while needless spending and heed- 
less extravagance have marked every decay in the his- 
tory of nations. Give the assurance of that rugged 
simplicity of American life which marked the first cen- 
tury of amazing development and this generation may 
underwrite a second century of surpassing; accomplish- 
ment. 

The Republican party was founded by farmers, with 
the sensitive conscience born of their freedom and 
their simple lives. These founders sprang from the 
farms of the then Middle West Our party has never 



SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 55 

failed in its realization that agriculture is essentially 
the foundation of our very existence, and it has ever 
been our policy, purpose and performance to protect 
and promote that essential industry. 

New conditions, which attend amazing growth and 
extraordinary industrial development, call for a new 
and forward-looking program. The American farmer 
had a hundred and twenty millions to feed in the home 
market, and heard the cry of the world for food and 
answered it, though he faced an appalling task amid 
handicaps never encountered before. 

AGItlCULTURAL COOPERATIO^f XJkGED 

In the rise of price levels there have come increased 
appraisals to his acres without adding to their value 
in fact, but which do add to his taxes and expenses 
without enhancing his returns. His helpers have 
yielded to the lure of shop and city, until, almost alone, 
he has met and borne the burden of the only insistent 
attempts to force down prices. It challenges both the 
wisdom and the justice of artificial drives on prices to 
recall that they were effective almost solely against his 
products in the hands of the producer and never 
effective against the same products in passing to the 
consumer. Contemplating the defenselessness of the 
individual farmer to meet the organized buyers of his 
products and the distributors of the things the farmer 
buys, I hold that farmers should not only be permitted 
but encouraged to join in cooperative association to 
reap the just measure of reward merited by their ar- 
duous toil. Let us facilitate cooperation to insure 
against the risks attending agriculture, which the urban 



54 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

world so little understands, and a like cooperation to 
market their products as directly as possible with the 
consumer, in the interests of all. Upon such associa- 
tion and cooperation should be laid only such restric- 
tions as will prevent arbitrary control of our food sup- 
ply and the fixing of extortionate price upon it. 

Our platform is an earnest pledge of renewed con- 
cern for this most essential and elemental industry, 
and in both appreciation and interest we pledge effect- 
ive expression in law and practise. We will hail that 
cooperation which again will make profitable and de- 
sirable the ownership and operation of comparatively 
small farms intensively cultivated, and which will fa- 
cilitate the caring for the products of farm and orchard 
without the lamentable waste under present conditions. 

America would look with anxiety on the discourage- 
ment of farming activity either through the govern- 
ment's neglect or its paralysis by socialistic practises. 
A Republican administration will be committed to re- 
newed regard for agriculture, and seek the participa- 
tion of farmers in curing the ills justly complained of, 
and aim to place the American farm where it ought to 
be — highly ranked in American activities and fully 
sharing the highest good fortunes of American life. 

IRRIGATION AND RECLAMATION 

Becomingly associated with this subject are the poli- 
cies of irrigation and reclamation, so essential to agri- 
cultural expansion, and the continued development of 
the great and wonderful West. It is our purpose to 
continue and enlarge federal aid, not in sectional par- 
tiality, but for the good of all America. We hold to 



SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 55 

that harmony of relationship between conservation and 
development, which fittingly appraises our natural re- 
sources and makes them available to developing Amer- 
ica of to-day, and still holds to the conserving thought 
for the America of to-morrow. 

The federal government's relation to reclamation 
and development is too important to admit of ample 
discussion to-day. Alaska, alone, is rich in resources 
beyond all imagination, and needs only closer linking, 
through the lines of transportation and a governmental 
policy that both safeguards and encourages develop- 
ment, to speed it to a foremost position as a common- 
wealth, rugged in citizenship and rich in materialized 
resources. 

These things I can only mention. Within becoming 
limits one can not say more. Indeed, for the present 
many questions of vast importance must be hastily 
passed, reserving a fuller discussion to suitable occa- 
sion as the campaign advances. 

SPECIFIC PROPOSALS 

I believe the budget system will efifect a necessary, 
helpful reformation, and reveal business methods to 
government business. 

I believe federal departments should be made more 
businesslike and send back to productive effort thou- 
sands of federal employees who are either duplicating 
work or not essential at all. 

I believe in the protective tariff policy and know we 
will be calling for its saving Americanism again. 

I believe in a great merchant marine — I would have 
this republic the leading maritime nation of the world. 



56 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

I believe in a navy ample to protect it, and able to 
assure us dependable defense. 

I believe in a small army, but the best in the world, 
with a mindfulness for preparedness which will avoid 
the unutterable cost of our previous neglect. 

I believe in our eminence in trade abroad, which the 
government should aid in expanding, both in revealing 
markets and speeding cargoes. 

I believe in establishing standards for immigration, 
which are concerned with the future citizenship of the 
republic, not with mere man-power in industry. 

I believe that every man who dons the garb of 
American citizenship and walks in the light of Amer- 
ican opportunity must become American in heart and 
soul. 

I believe in holding fast to every forward step in 
unshackling child labor and elevating conditions of 
woman's employment. 

I believe the federal government should stamp out 
lynching and remove that stain from the fair name of 
America. 

I believe the federal government should give its ef- 
fective aid in solving the problem of ample and becom- 
ing housing of its citizenship. 

I believe this government should make its Liberty 
and Victory bonds worth all that its patriotic citizens 
paid in purchasing them. 

I believe the tax burdens imposed for the war emer-^ 
gency must be revised to the needs of peace, and in 
the interest of equity in distribution of the burden. 

I believe the negro citizens of America should be 
guaranteed the enjoyment of all their rights, that they 



SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 57 

have earned the full measure of citizenship bestowed, 
that their sacrifices in blood on the battlefields of the 
repubhc have entitled them to all of freedom and op- 
portunity, all of sympathy and aid that the American 
spirit of fairness and justice demands. 

I believe there is an easy and open path to righteous 
relationship with Mexico. It has seemed to me that 
our undeveloped, uncertain and infirm policy has made 
us a culpable party to the governmental misfortunes 
in that land. Our relations ought to be both friendly 
and sympathetic; we would like to acclaim a stable 
government there, and offer a neighborly hand in point- 
ing the way to greater progress. It will be simple to 
have a plain and neighborly understanding, merely an 
understanding about respecting our borders, about pro- 
tecting the lives and possessions of American citizens 
lawfully within the Mexican dominions. There must 
be that understanding, else there can be no recognition, 
and then the understanding must be faithfully kept. 

Many of these declarations deserve a fuller expres- 
sion, with some suggestions of plans to emphasize the 
faith. Such expression will follow, in due time, I 
promise you. 

IMPORTANCE OF LAW ENFORCEMENT 

I believe in law enforcement. If elected I mean to 
be a constitutional president, and it is impossible to ig- 
nore the Constitution, unthinkable to evade the law, 
when our very committal is to orderly government. 
People ever will differ about the wisdom of the enact- 
ment of a law — there is divided opinion respecting the 
eighteenth amendment and the laws enacted to make it 



58 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

operative — ^but there can be no difference of opinion 
about honest law enforcement. 

Neither government nor party can afford to cheat 
the American people. The laws of Congress must har- 
monize with the Constitution, else they soon are ad- 
judged to be void; Congress enacts the laws, and the 
executive branch of government is charged with en- 
forcement. We can not nullify because of divided 
opinion, we can not jeopardize orderly government 
with contempt for law enforcement. Modification or 
repeal is the right of a free people, whenever the de- 
liberate and intelligent public sentiment commands, but 
perversion and evasion mark the paths to the failure of 
government itself. 

TRIBUTE TO WORLD WAR VETERANS 

Though not in any partisan sense, I must speak of 
the services of the men and women who rallied to the 
colors of the republic in the world war. America real- 
izes and appreciates the services rendered, the sacri- 
fices made and the sufferings endured. There shall be 
no distinction between those who knew the perils and 
glories of the battle front or the dangers of the sea, 
and those who were compelled to serve behind the 
lines, or those who constituted the great reserve of a 
grand army which awaited the call in camps at home. 

All were brave, all were sacrificing, all were sharers 
of those ideals which sent our boys thrice-armed to 
war. Worthy sons and daughters, these, fit successors 
to those who christened our banners in the immortal 
beginning, worthy sons of those who saved the Union 
and nationality when civil war wiped the ambiguity 



SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 59 

from the Constitution, ready sons of those who drew 
the sword for humanity's sake the first time in the 
world, in 1898. 

The four milHon defenders on land and sea were 
worthy of the best traditions of a people never war- 
like in peace and never pacifist in war. They com- 
manded our pride, they have our gratitude, which must 
have genuine expression. It is not only a duty, it is a 
privilege to see that the sacrifices made shall be re- 
quited, and that those still suffering from casualties 
and disabilities shall be abundantly aided and restored 
to the highest capabilities of citizenship and its enjoy- 
ment. 

WOMAN SUFFRAGE 

The womanhood of America, always its glory, its in- 
spiration and the potent, uplifting force in its social 
and spiritual development, is about to be enfranchised. 
Insofar as Congress can go, the fact is already accom- 
plished. By party edict, by my recorded vote, by per- 
sonal conviction I am committed to this measure of 
justice. It is my earnest hope, my sincere desire that 
the one needed state vote be quickly recorded in the 
affirmation of the right of equal suffrage and that the 
vote of every citizen shall be cast and counted in the 
approaching election. 

Let us not share the apprehensions of many men and 
women as to the danger of this momentous extension 
of the franchise. Women have never been without in- 
fluence in our political life. Enfranchisement will 
bring to the polls the votes of citizens who have been 
born upon our soil, or who have sought in faith and as- 



60 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

surance the freedom and opportunities of our land. It 
will bring the women educated in our schools, trained 
in our customs and habits of thought, and sharers of 
our problems. It will bring the alert mind, the awak- 
ened conscience, the sure intuition, the abhorrence of 
tyranny or oppression, the wide and tender sympathy 
that distinguish the women of America. Surely there 
can be no danger there. 

And to the great number of noble women who have 
opposed in conviction the tremendous change in the 
ancient relation of the sexes as applied to government, 
I venture to plead that they will accept the full respon- 
sibility of enlarged citizenship and give to the best in 
the republic their suffrage and support. 

CONFIDENCE IN AMERICA 

Much has been said of late about world ideals, but 
I prefer to think of the ideal for America. I like to 
think there is something more than the patriotism and 
practical wisdom of the founding fathers. It is good 
to believe that maybe destiny held this New- World re- 
public to be the supreme example of representative de- 
mocracy and orderly liberty by which humanity is in- 
spired to higher achievement. It is idle to think we 
have attained perfection, but there is the satisfying 
knowledge that we hold orderly processes for making 
our government reflect the heart and mind of the re- 
public. Ours is not only a fortunate people but a very 
common-sensical people, with vision high but their feet 
on the earth, with belief in themselves and faith in 
God. Whether enemies threaten from without or men- 
aces arise from within, there is some indefinable voice 



SPEECH OF ACCEPTANCE 61 

saying: "Have confidence in the republic! America 
will go on !" 

Here is a temple of liberty no storms may shake, 
here are the altars of freedom no passions shall de- 
stroy. It was American in conception, American in 
its building, it shall be American in the fulfillment. 
Sectional once, we are all American now, and we mean 
to be all Americans to all the world. 

Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, my coun- 
trymen all : I would not be my natural self if I did not 
utter my consciousness of my limited ability to meet 
your full expectations, or to realize the aspirations 
within my own breast, but I will gladly give all that is 
in me, all of heart, soul and mind and abiding love of 
country, to service in our common cause. I can only 
pray to the omnipotent God that I may be as worthy 
in service as I know myself to be faithful in thought 
and purpose. One can not give more. Mindful of the 
vast responsibilities I must be frankly humble, but I 
have that confidence in the consideration and support 
of all true Americans which makes me wholly unafraid. 
With an unalterable faith and in a hopeful spirit, with 
a hymn of service in my heart, I pledge fidelity to our 
country and to God, and accept the nomination of the 
Republican party for the presidency of the United 
States. 



CHAPTER III 

Safeguarding America 

"Address on the League of Nations in the United Stales 
Senate, September ii, ipip 

Mr. President — If it were not for seeming indif- 
ference in an hour of imperiled nationality, I believe I 
should be content to rest my expression as to the pend- 
ing treaty wholly on the report of the Committee on 
Foreign Relations. I say this with propriety, I think, 
because I had no part in its writing, though I was a 
participant in the conclusions reached. My judgment 
is that it is one of the American documents well worthy 
of preservation. 

Mr. President, every day of discussion^ presidential 
utterances included, and every hour of study combine 
to persuade me that the league of nations venture in 
the form in which the covenant has been negotiated 
is one of peril to the republic. To accept it unaltered 
would be a betrayal of America. It is not for me to 
consider constitutional inhibitions. There is probably 
nothing to prevent a nation undertaking self-destruc- 
tion by indirection or otherwise if the treaty-making 
powers are in accord about the desirability of such a 
course. Nor is it for me to discuss the finer points 
involved in international law and diplomatic niceties, 
because once the league is established it becomes the 

62 



SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 63 

maker of international law and diplomacy ends in 
league autocracy. 

NATIONALITY IS PARAMOUNT 

Such impressions as I wish to offer are the very 
simple ones of an American who is jealous of the re- 
public's nationality and fears paralysis in that inter- 
nationality which is the league's loftiest aim. Sub- 
merged nationality and supreme internationality are 
more to be expected than the proclaimed permanency 
of peace, which first caught the sympathy and support 
of a peace-loving world. 

Mr. President, I know the natural aspirations of 
civilized humanity and share them. I know how the 
heart of the world, torn and bleeding and anguished 
and palpitant in the cataclysmal war, throbs in hunger 
for assured tranquillity. I pity him who has not felt 
the yearnings within his own breast. No real Ameri- 
can is so bereft of feeling. There is no monopoly of 
the love of peace, and there is no exclusiveness in 
concern for humanity's sake. Neither is there a limited 
circle of those who act in patriotic devotion nor 
restricted groups in loving our common country. I 
say these perfectly obvious things because it is time 
to clear up some mistaken impressions. The pro- 
ponents of the Wilsonian league of nations have no 
more claim to an exclusive desire for the peace of our 
country and the world than the opponents of this 
league have exclusive claim to patriotic devotion to our 
own nation. And the considerable numbers who are 
grieving that there is involved in the treaty-making 



64 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

power of a portion of the Senate which is impelled by- 
partisan bias ought to revise their judgment, because 
it is as unfair and uncomplimentary to one side as the 
other and challenges the wisdom of popular govern- 
ment. However, if disagreement with the executive, 
now that the war is won, is to invite the charge of 
narrow partisanship, I welcome it and am content to 
let it go at that. 

INVOLVEMENTS OF LEAGUE 

It was the truth, last year, two years ago, three and 
four years ago, the people of this country were heed- 
lessly and overwhelmingly for a league of nations, 
or a society of nations, or a world court, or some inter- 
national association which should develop a fraternity 
of action among civilized peoples and save humanity 
not only from the sorrows and sufferings like those 
which came with the war now ended, but from the in- 
volvements of which we are not yet emerged. Many 
leaders of the party represented on this side of the 
chamber were conspicuous in its advocacy, and thou- 
sands less notable joined the chorus. Among the 
latter I joined in writing a favoring declaration in the 
platform of the Republican party in Ohio, which I 
think fairly voiced the aspirations of the people of that 
state. In the popular thought was the wish to abolish 
war and promote peace and make justice supreme, 
and it was believed that the world, war wearied and 
drenched with the blood of millions of devoted nation- 
alists, would be ready for the committal. Our people 
were thinking of the thing desired, and never pondered 
the method or the cost of its making. Nobody stopped 



SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 65 

to think of the involvements then. We are only learn- 
ing tbem now. 

It would have been well to have counseled with 
one another before the covenant was fashioned. The 
people voted such a preference most emphatically last 
November. Most people thought there would be coun- 
seling, and it ought to have been done. When the 
armistice brought humanity's greatest sigh of relief 
since fellowship engirdled the earth, it was the com- 
mon thought that sympathy would inspire and justice 
would impel and safety would demand some created 
agency of the conscience of the world that should 
contribute to the furtherance of peace and maintained 
tranquillity. But the immediate task was the settlement 
of the war suspended by the armistice. The manifest 
yearning was for recovery from madness and destruc- 
tion and waste and disorder, and the instincts of self- 
preservation called for speedy restoration. No one 
doubted that the measureless cost and unspeakable 
suffering would awaken the consciences of nations to 
take stock of their relationships and readjust them to 
guard against recurrent horrors. But the pressing call 
was for peace, peace among the belligerent powers, 
peace for convalescence, peace for deliberation, peace 
for that understanding which is the first essential in 
undertaking a world-wide covenant which mankind 
had never effected heretofore. 

AMERICA ESSENTIAL FACTOR IN WAR 

No one can doubt the advantageous position of this 
republic when the armistice was signed. We had 
proven our unselfishness. We alone had not won the 



66 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

war, but our entrance into the conflict in April, 1917, 
saved the waning morale of allied nations which bore 
the brunt of German attack, and our first expedition- 
ary forces in the summer of 1917 revived the drooping 
spirits of the fighting forces of France and England, 
and in 1918 the sons of this republic turned the sweep- 
ing tide of battle backward. It is not unseemly to say 
our forces were an absolutely essential factor in the 
winning, though our 2,000,000 of fighting and ir- 
resistible Americans were only a partial expression of 
our resources and our resolution that Germany and 
her allies must be brought to terms. It is a glorious 
record which calls for no recital here. I am trying only 
to call to mind our advantageous position — the grati- 
tude of the powers with whom we were associated, 
the belated realization and respect of the Central Pow- 
ers, the tardy awakening of Germany, who learned 
the lesson that Americans could and would fight, and 
the world's understanding of our unselfishness in the 
defense of our national rights. 

The loftiness of our position was correctly and 
creditably appraised, notwithstanding the excessive 
proclamation of democracy and humanity. The latter 
was mainly for home consumption. It may be taken 
as one of the inevitable things in popular government, 
it was distinctly a symptom of our neglect of the 
American spirit. Those who stop to analyze know, 
of course, that if the German assault had been aimed 
at the world's democracy — our defense of democracy 
ought to have answered with every American gun 
when Belgium w^as invaded. And the same analytical 
thought must have persuaded the thinking American 



SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 6Z 

that if it was our duty to make war for humanity's 
sake, duty called louflly above the horrified exclama- 
tion of the world when the Lusitania was sunk without 
pity for dying humanity on her unsuspecting decks. 
I am not indulging in belated complaint, because I 
knew the tremendous seriousness of plunging the re- 
public in war, and I knew then our unreadiness of 
spirit for such a committal. The point I am aiming at 
is to clarify our purpose in entering the war in order 
to emphasize our favorable position when it came to 
an end. The everlasting truth is that we were lashed 
by German ruthlessness to a defense of our national 
rights, and we did defend them, until Germany's power 
for ruthlessness has been destroyed beyond recovery 
for generations to come. We defended only our rights, 
and we know now, if we did not realize before, that 
the nation which does not defend its national rights 
does not deserve to survive. We did not ask more, 
except to help in righteous restoration, and the world 
correctly appraised the unselfishness which marked 
our efforts, 

COUNSEL NEEDED AT PEACE CONFERENCE 

It was a very simple course to have taken. Ours 
was a commanding voice in the adjustments of peace, 
willingly and gladly heeded. It was ours to pass judg- 
ment on the terms of peace and speed their conclusion. 
I must confess. Senators, I could find no fault with the 
president going to the peace table. The world had 
never seen before such an opportunity for service, and 
I thought it fitting that the first citizen of the republic 
shguld SQ and utter the unbiased advice of America, 



68 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

amid the embitterments and prejudices that had grown 
out of twenty centuries of European conflict. I do 
not share the criticism that he invited no members 
of this body, which must approve every treaty to which 
the republic is committed. I do complain that in 
this most extraordinary and unparalleled wreck in the 
wake of world-wide war he consented to counsel and 
advise with none who have sworn duties to perform, 
and devoted, essentially alone, his talents and his 
supreme influence to reformations and restitutions, 
and the establishment of governments and the realiza- 
tions of ambitions and the fulfillment of dreams which 
human struggles and battling peoples and heroic sacri- 
fices have not effected since the world began, and never 
will be realized until that millennial day that marks 
the beginning of heaven on earth. The situation pre- 
sented intensely practical problems, and he clung mainly 
to lofty theories. 

Sometimes I think a very capable writer of history 
is very much spoiled for the making of it. I can recall 
now my reverent regard for Julius Caesar when I 
struggled with his recital of the wars in Gaul. It re- 
quired a wider reading before I realized that the 
great commoner of that day was making history and 
recording it for the effect it might and did have south 
of the Rubicon. It is easy to understand the perfectly 
natural and laudable ambition to do the superlative 
thing which history is waiting to record, which super- 
lative thing was in the historian's mind, but it needed 
penetrating vision to meet the pressing, practical prob- 
lems which were awaiting solution, by very practical 
men. 



SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 69 

SECRET BARTERING UNHEEDED 

One can conceive the idealist who is blind to the bald 
realities of secret covenants and selfish bartering inci- 
dent to the alliances wrought amid the anxieties and 
necessities of so stupendous a war. Nations were 
battling for their very existence, and they made pledges 
with little reckoning of the future. It was as- 
sumed our government knew the details, but the as- 
sumption was a mistaken one. The president frankly 
said he did not know. Merely fighting in our own 
defense, it was excusable for us not to know, for we 
should have given to our utmost of lives and treasure 
regardless of the aftermath. But in joining the strug- 
gle professedly for democracy's sake, we ought to 
have had some forecast of democracy's fate in the 
pregnant aftermath. More, to meddle effectively in 
the affairs of the world, we ought to have known the 
world's promises. Herein lies the weakness of our 
whole part at the peace table. 

The war had its inception in German ambition, ex- 
panded domain, if not world domination, all conceived 
in drunkenness with power. It was met in self-defense 
— righteous self-defense — ^but there was inevitable con- 
sideration of the spoils of victory. They became the 
inspiration and considerations of alliances, and there 
were understandings, written and unwritten. We 
should be blind not to recognize the necessity and 
naturalness of it. The pity is that we did not recog- 
nize the evident truth and speak with the confident 
voice of justice, and hold ourselves aloof from any 
committal which savored of unrighteousness. If 



70 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

Europe, in the stress of war or out of it, will barter 
in territories and peoples, we can not hinder, but we 
need not approve and surely we must not guarantee. 



Whether the president knew the details of negoti- 
ated selfishness while the war was raging, it was in- 
evitable that he soon learned when he made his tri- 
umphant landing on the friendly soil of France. It 
was not then too late to hold aloof. We were seeking 
only peace. We sought no territory, no mandatory, 
no reparation — ^nothing was asked. Our unselfishness 
was genuine, to the everlasting honor of this republic. 
But the glory of the league of nations — an appealing 
conception — filled the American commission's vision, 
while distinctly American interests — aye, sacred Ameri- 
can interests — were ignored and forgotten in a new 
and consuming concern for the world. 

Empires and sovereign states, autocratic, imperial, 
or democratic, had fought and sacrificed and bargained 
and covenanted — and we had fought with them — and 
they craved peace and we craved peace. But they 
wanted annexations and extensions and creations, and 
they wanted this republic, with its resources — with its 
wealth of men and materials — to guarantee the changes 
they had wrought, and wanted the United States of 
America in their unselfishness to guarantee in per- 
petuity the selfishness of the Old World. 

NOTHING SUBSTANTIAL OFFERED 

They had nothing to oflFer us but the phantasmal 
thing, taking the elusory shape of the image of peace. 



SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 71 

a, promise deeply appealing to the aspirations of our- 
selves and the world, for tranquillity and the banish- 
ment of war. And we bargained for it, and then they 
fashioned it into a reality, suited to serve Europe and 
the Orient as the seal of righteousness on all to which 
the allied powers had agreed. 

Mr. President, I grant the worthiness, the loftiness 
of the ideal when we look above and beyond the im- 
morality which it cloaks. One must concede the good 
which is aimed at. No one who is sincere can question 
the desirability of closer fraternity among the nations 
of the earth. No thoughtful citizen of any country 
will dispute the need of the clarification and codifica- 
tion of international law. Such a thing might have 
saved us from involvement in the European war, un- 
less Germany was madly determined to effect her own 
destruction. 

SUPERGOVERNMENT CREATED 

International arbitration and a world court for jus- 
ticiable disputes appeal to all who think justice is sus- 
tained in reason rather than in armed dispute. The 
establishment of an agency for the revelation of the 
moral judgment of the world can never be amiss. 
These things might well have come out of the com- 
bined consciences of the nations awakened to new 
ideals amid the sufferings of war, and they will yet 
come. But it does not require a supergovernment to 
effect them, nor the surrender of nationahty and inde- 
pendence of action to sanction them. 

It is my deliberate conviction that the league of 
nations covenant, as negotiated at Paris and signed at 



72 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

Versailles, either creates a supergovernment of the 
nations which enter it or it will prove the colossal 
disappointment of the ages. Though it would be vastly- 
more serious as the former, I can not believe this re- 
public ought to sanction it in either case. Why pro- 
claim a promise that will embitter the world*s disap- 
pointment ? 

DISARMAMENT NOT ACCOMPLISHED 

Let US note, first, the probability of disappointment. 
Does it effect disarmament? The member nations 
decide for themselves the necessary size of their armed 
forces, which are not to be increased except with the 
league's approval. Of course there is to be studied 
recommendation for reduction, but any two powers 
in concerted action may reject the entire program. 
Who has heard of a proposal to diminish the great 
British navy, which holds Great Britain undisputed 
mistress of the world's seas ? Few will question Great 
Britain's wisdom in her well-known attitude. Surely 
no British subject will question it. She has an empire 
to defend and a commerce to guard, without which 
England's glory is at an end. 

Only a few days ago the cabled news told us that 
France will maintain a larger army than that republic 
possessed when she entered the world war. Doubtless 
France's security demands it, in spite of the negotiated 
alliance which calls the United States and Great 
Britain to her aid in case of a renewed German assault. 
We know little about Japan, but we do know that 
Japan may fix her own limitations as to army and 



SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 73 

navy, "taking into account geographical conditions 
and national safety," until under this treaty we give 
our sons and our resources to the enforcement of 
international agreements by common action under 
articles 8 and 10. 

Is disarmament looming as a hope realized? Look 
for an instant at home. With the league confidently 
expected, with all its blessings of peace, limited only 
by "interpretations," we are contemplating an army 
of half a million, seven times our previous establish- 
ment in peace, and the men, in Congress or out, who 
would cut our program for an expanded navy are few 
and far between. More, the man who would suggest 
it would be unmindful of our security. Verily, he 
who sees world disarmament in this league covenant 
has a faith which surpasses understanding. 

ARBITRATION NOT ASSURED 

Will nations arbitrate their differences under the 
league covenant? They will if both parties to the dis- 
pute are agreed, and they can not do that without it. 
Under the covenant one party may decline, then the 
council takes the case, and we have recently come to 
know the recommendations of the council constitute 
its judgment only as to a "moral" obligation. 

We have heard much lately about "moral" obliga- 
tions. When a thing is covenanted it is difficult for 
me to distinguish between moral and legal obligation. 
For this republic either or both ought to be solemnly 
binding. The nation which ignores either is losing 
the conscience which is essential to self-respect and 



74 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

respect among nations. It was Germany's contempt 
for a "scrap of paper" that made her an outcast in 
the eyes of the civilized world. 

There has been a curious conflict of meaning in the 
use of the word "moral." When senators, speaking 
in this chamber in defense of the league covenant, 
found opposition developing to the powers conveyed 
in article 10, they hastened to say the council's call to 
war, armed or economic, in defense of any member 
was not binding — "only a moral obligation." I 
have heard the term quoted again and again and in the 
recorded conference between members of the Foreign 
Relations Committee and the president it was declared 
by the president that we were not bound to go to war 
on recommendation of the council, that there was 
"only a moral obligation," on which we should have 
to pass judgment for ourselves. Later on, in the 
record of the meeting, the president emphatically de- 
clared a moral obligation the most binding of all. Let 
every man make the distinction that he prefers. A 
contract is a contract, a covenant is a covenant, and 
if this republic does not mean to do as it promises, 
it has no business to make the promise. 

ARTICLE TEN MERE PHANTOM 

There is no language in the covenant more plain 
than article 10. Either it means what it says, and obli- 
gates the member nations to go to war in defense of a 
member nation, or it means nothing at all. If it leaves 
any member nation free to exercise its own judgment 
as to the merits of any attack, it does not guarantee 
the territorial integrity or peace of any nation. It is 



SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 75 

worse than phantom ; it is the mirage that lures nations 
thirsting for peace to the very desert of cruel destruc- 
tion. The pity of it is that no reservation will cure 
the ill. Without the power, which is clearly expressed, 
*'the league is a rope of sand," as the senator from 
Connecticut described it, and with the power estab- 
lished, as it must be to make the league effective, we 
have surrendered our own freedom of action to a 
council whose members will represent the prejudices, 
ambitions, hatreds, and jealousies of the Old World, or 
to the assembly, where we are outvoted six to one by 
Great Britain and her colonies, and we still remain a 
party to the racial, geographical, and inherited enmities 
of Europe and the Orient. 

Many have written me, and senators have spoken 
and the president has argued, that we are no longer 
isolated from the Old World, that we have a duty to 
humanity, and we can not escape our manifest duty 
to world civilization. It is urged that we struck down 
the barriers when we sent the sons of the republic 
to war, and there can be no withdrawal now. One 
can not dispute our ever-widening influence; none 
would narrow it. It began when we unsheathed the 
sword literally in behalf of humanity for the first time 
in the world. That was when we went to war to 
liberate Cuba and expanded to the Philippines. It is 
easy to recall the outcry against imperialism then by 
the very adherents of world sponsorship to-day — aye, 
by those who only three years ago would have furled 
the flag there, and promise it now, after our contri- 
bution to one defenseless people's progress unmatched 
in all history. 



7t REDEDICATING AMERICA 



FOUGHT FOR AMERICAN RIGHTS 

Ours is truly an expanded influence and a world 
interest, but there is yet for us a splendid isolation. 
The sons of America, 2,000,000 of them, crossed the 
seas in spite of svibmarine ruthlessness and every 
danger Germany could devise, and 2,000,000 more were 
ready, and 5,000,000 more would have prepared if 
needed, and they heroically fought and effectively 
taught arrogant Germany to respect American rights 
and left a wholesome impress on the remainder of 
the w^orld. The soldiers have in the main returned, 
and, having accomplished our righteous purpose, it 
was vastly more easy to have severed our involvement 
than it was to bring the boys home and turn to the 
pursuits of peace again. The people of this republic 
were not concerned with governing the universe. Their 
interests, their hearts, their hopes, their ambitions, 
their weal or woe — all of these are in the United 
States of America. We wanted nothing abroad but 
respect for our just rights, and that we mean to have, 
in peace or war, no matter who threatens. 

It would have been so easy, if our commission had 
thought of America first, to have said to the allied 
powers, **Look here, friends and allies — ^yes, and to 
enemies as well — we came over and helped you bring 
an outlaw to terms, because he trespassed our rights 
beyond endurance. He is humbled now, and it is 
yours to restore order and make a just and abiding 
peace. We want peace, and we want to go to work 
and replace the waste of war. We will advise, if we 
can and you wish it, but we are asking nothing, and 



SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 77. 

we will go back home and see to our own affairs. Wc 
do not mean to mix in again, unless some bully in 
making a row infringes our rights and murders our 
citizens and destroys our lawful property. In that 
event we will be forced to come back, but we will come 
more promptly the next time." That would have left 
a good impression, and we would have been at peace, 
and so would Europe, months ago. 

Mr. President, the first official of our government 
is touring the country to invite the people of the re- 
public, the great mass whose heart is ever right in ulti- 
mate decision, to the support of this untouchable and 
unamendable and supposedly sacred document. He 
visited the capital of the state which I have the honor 
to represent, and was received with the respect be- 
coming his great office, and was applauded, as often 
happens to appealing speech, of which he is the master. 
He has spoken and is speaking elsewhere, and the 
people of our state are reading, in common with the 
reading people of America. I am not finding fault 
with the tour, even if it is not wholly purposed to 
promote the league covenant. One may not assume 
that it involves a feeling of the political pulse of the 
country, but if it is, if it is to test popular feeling about 
putting the presidency permanently in the hands of 
one equipped to direct the world aright and at the 
same time merge this republic in a supergovernment 
of the world, my partisan prejudices would be rejoic- 
ing. But the president told the reverent people of 
Ohio that he had only to report to them — in a broad 
sense, the people — and it so happens that I, too, as 
insignificant as my position is, relatively, have to report 



78 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

to the same people, and I want them to have not only 
the truth but all the truth ; not only fine generalities 
but illuminating details. 

MANY PEOPLES NOT HEARD 

Mr. President, the treaty is being expounded by its 
chief author to the people with vastly more freedom 
of utterance than this body has known, notwithstand- 
ing our solemn responsibility in making it a binding 
covenant on the part of this republic. Perhaps it does 
not matter, because we have before us the treaty itself, 
and we know what it says, though we do not have 
all the collateral covenants and do not know all to 
which we are pledged or to what ratification commits 
us. Yet we have had the advantage, or disadvantage, 
if you prefer, of hearing also from others of the peace 
commission, from experts who drafted many of its 
articles, and alas, we have heard from many who 
spoke for those who pleaded for their rights at Paris 
and who declared they were not heard, no matter what 
is said now about this being the first consecration of 
international conscience to the rights of helpless peoples 
and small nations. 

Let me digress for a moment to suggest some of 
my own impressions gathered during the hearings 
granted to the American representatives of the as- 
piring peoples of Europe and Asia and Egypt, whose 
aspirations and long-deferred hopes of liberty and 
nationality are alleged to have been safeguarded in 
this supercreation of humanity. It was futile, of 
course, for a Senate committee to assume to answer 
prayers or comply with protest, for our function is not 



SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 79 

one of negotiation. However, there were citizens cry- 
ing to be heard, after a denial at the fount of justice 
in Europe, and we listened. They begged amendment 
or rejection to save their liberties or to preserve their 
nationalities or to maintain their homogeneous peoples. 
Spokesmen for China cried out against the rape of the 
first great democracy of the Orient, and the plea was 
eloquent with recited sacrifices and noble assistance 
in the winning of the war. We uttered our chagrin 
that the spokesmen for the American conscience — aye, 
for the "conscience of civilization" — had sanctioned 
the confessed immorality of the Shantung award to 
satisfy a secret covenant against which we righteously 
proclaimed, and we did all we can do to right the 
wrong. 

We heard the Americans speaking for their kinsmen 
of Greece, our allies in war, protesting the award of 
Thrace and its Greek peoples to Bulgaria who fought 
for German domination. We listened to those who 
were Croats or Slovenes or Serbs utter their despair 
over "the rectifications of history" under territorial 
awards arrived at for Jugo-Slavia, and Americans of 
Italian origin or ancestry presented the appeals of 
Italians for unsevered relationship from the mother- 
land. More, Americans who originated in Egypt, 
with its traditions and ancient civilization, begged that 
we shall not sanction their transfer from Turkey and 
Germany to Great Britain, but save them their in- 
herited freedom and their right to becoming aspira- 
tions. Hungarians prayed for restored enfranchise- 
ment amid the racial inspiration of the Magyars ; and 
the irrepressible advocates of Irish freedom made the 



80 REDEDICATING AMERICA ^ 

plea before the Senate Committee which could not be 
heard at Paris. I have not named them all, but enough 
to reveal the utter futility, the hopeless impracticability 
of this republic attempting to right the cumulative 
wrongs of history and satisfy the perfectly natural 
ambitions and aspirations of races and peoples. One 
can not wave the wand of democracy, even of exces- 
sively proclaimed American democracy, and do for 
Poland in a day or a year or a generation what cen- 
turies of sacrifice and warfare and self-determination 
have not done. 

AVENUE TO UNENDING WAR 

Does any thinking man stop to measure the colossal 
and endless involvement before which the sublimest 
unselfishness and most confident altruism must falter ? 
Contemplate for a moment only the mandatory for 
Armenia. It is very appealing to portray the woes, 
the outrages, the massacres, the awakening hopes of 
Armenia, and visualize the doubts and distresses and 
sacrificed lives while "the Senate waits." I know the 
appeal that touches the heart of Christian America 
in its concern and sympathy for Armenia. It easily 
may be made to seem as if the sympathetic Son of God 
had turned to the omnipotent Father to send this 
twentieth-century defender of the New Testament 
to succor those stricken believers in the great Trinity. 
But the big, warning truth is little proclaimed. Our 
armies — sons of this republic, the youths from Ameri- 
can homes — are wanted there. Armenia calls and 
Great Britain is urging, insisting. A hundred thou- 
sand soldiers are needed. More American soldiers for 



SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 81 

Armenia than we heretofore maintained under the 
flag in any of the years of peace. Answer the call, 
and we station this American army at the gateway 
between Orient and Occident, to become involved in 
every conflict in the Old World, and our splendid isola- 
tion becomes a memory and our boasted peace a mock- 
ery. This is not the way to peace. This is the avenue 
to unending war. 

Mr. President, I am not insensible to the sufferings 
of Armenia, nor am I deaf to the wails forced by the 
cruelties of barbarity wherever our ideals of civiliza- 
tion are not maintained. But I am thinking of America 
first. Safety, as well as charity, begins at home. Self- 
ishness? No. It is self-preservation. Measureless 
as our resources are, large as our man power is, and 
chivalrous as our purposes may be, we are not strong 
enough to assume sponsorship for all the oppressed of 
the world. No people, no nation is strong enough 
for such a supreme responsibiHty. We in America 
have the republic to preserve. And in this very pro- 
gram of meddlesome assumption, in some instances 
bordering on presumption, we are endangering our 
own republic. It is not alone the abandonment of 
security, so much warned against by the founding 
fathers, which suggests alarm. I am thinking of di- 
vided citizenship at home that must attend our at- 
tempted reorganization of the world. 

Turn back for a moment to the appealing citizens 
who appeared before the Foreign Relations Committee 
in prayer or protest. They fairly represented a large 
proportion of American citizenship. We have no racial 
•ntity in this republic. We are polyglot of tongue, 



82 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

which generations will not wholly change. The in- 
volvement in the world war found us divided in spirit. 
The founding fathers were eager to share their free- 
dom and speed development of our incalculable re- 
sources, and they asked the world to come, and the 
world did come — the oppressed, the adventurous, the 
industrious; but there was neglected consecration of 
citizenship. 

TO PRESERVE AMERICANISM 

In the travail of war the American soul was bom, 
and we have preached and practised Americanization 
ever since, and we mean to go on and make this repub- 
lic American in fact as well as in name. No republic 
can endure half loyal and half disloyal ; no citizenship 
is of permanent value whose heart is not in America. 
I had thought the war worth all it cost, in spite of its 
unutterable expenditure in lives and treasure, to have 
found ourselves. It was an inspiration to find the 
adopted sons of the republic consecrated to the com- 
mon cause. Yet, sirs, the unhappy aftermath is resur- 
recting the old lines of divided citizenship. We are 
restoring hyphenism under internationalism. 

One can not complain at the revealment, but I am 
lamenting the cause. It is all directly traceable to our 
assumption of world sponsorship. One can little blame 
the American of Italian origin for being concerned 
about the affairs of those bound by ties of blood, 
or find fault with the American of Greek origin for 
deep feelings about the fate of those of kin in Thrace, 
or criticize the American son of the old sod who finds 
in his heart an undying echo of the Irish cry for free- 



SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 83. 

dom. Instead of effacing the native interest, instead 
of merging the inherited soul in exclusive American- 
ism, we have already embarked on a program that 
awakens every racial pride, every Old-World prejudice, 
every inherited aspiration, and are rending the con- 
cord of American spirit which once promised to be 
the great compensation for all our sacrifices. This is 
no idle fancy. Justice, only simple justice, and liberty, 
God's own bequest of liberty, were on every lip, and 
there was no perfunctory utterances among those who 
appealed to the Senate through our committee. There 
was deep feeling no words could belie and that sin- 
cerity for which men die, and as I listened I deplored 
the eloquence of speech unperformed, which leads 
hope to flame high, then die in disappointment. And, 
sirs, I doubly deplored the proposals and pretenses 
that open anew the cleavage in the consecration of our 
adopted American citizenship. 

WHY AMERICA ENTERED WAR 

Senators, it is a great thing to be eloquent and per- 
suasive in speech, but it is also a very dangerous thing. 
I mean to be quite as respectful as I am sincere when 
I say that our present involvement and our further 
entanglement and most of the world's restlessness 
and revolution and threatened revolution are largely 
traceable to pre-war utterances and war-time pro- 
nouncements. Once before in this chamber I chal- 
lenged some of the statements as to why we went to 
war. I speak of it again now, because the president 
told the people of my state that our soldiers were 
"drafted for the very purpose of ending war," sind 



84 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

this league as negotiated is the only thing that will 
do it. It does not seem to have occurred to any one 
that we might appeal to the pride of the peoples of 
the earth. Still more recently a very eminent authority 
has proclaimed all opponents of the covenant as "con- 
temptible quitters if they do not see the game through." 
Mr. President, I turned to the Record of Congress 
for that fateful 6th of April, 1917, when this body 
voted the declaration of war against Germany. It 
had occurred to me that perhaps the resolution itself 
would give the official reason for going to war, as 
Congress would prefer history to record it. I turned 
to the preamble to the official declaration, and there 
is given the reason in the simplest language that words 
can express : 

"Whereas the Imperial German Government has 
committed repeated acts of war against the Govern- 
ment and the people of the United States of America, 
therefore be it resolved," 

And so forth. 

There is the whole story. Nothing there especially 
proclaiming democracy or humanity, because both 
had been fighting, sacrificing, and dying for more than 
two and a half years and we neither saw nor heard. 

PROCLAMATION OF NEUTRALITY RECALLED 

Let me clarify by further quotation from the presi- 
dent. I omit the official proclamation of neutrality in 
August of 1914, but want to reveal the conscience of 
America as spoken by him in the following January, 
when Belgium was devastated and France was bleed- 



SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 85 

ing, and Britain was sacrificing her volunteer defend- 
ers. I quote from a speech made at Indianapolis, 
scene of the more recent admonition to "put up or shut 
up." Search the quotation for democracy, humanity, 
"the end of all war/* or "the rectified wrongs of 
history" : 

"Only America at peace! Among all the great 
powers of the world only America saving her power 
for her own people. Do you not think it likely that 
the world will some time turn to America and say, 
'You were right and we were wrong. You kept your 
head when we lost ours.' " — The President, Indian- 
apolis, January 8, 1915. 

More than three months passed, and still the con- 
science of the republic was unchanged. I quote from 
the New York speech of the chief executive, delivered 
on April 20, 1915: 

"I am interested in neutrality because there is some- 
thing so much greater to do than fight ; there is a dis- 
tinction waiting for this nation that no nation ever got. 
That is the distinction of absolute self-control and self- 
mastery." 

Let us as an act of courtesy, pass the Philadelphia 
address, delivered three days after the Liisitania sink- 
ing, when humanity's cry was muffled by the ocean's 
depths and democracy was too shocked to speak. In 
December we still "stood apart, studiously neutral — it 
was our manifest duty." Thus the president spoke. 
But it is especially interesting to quote from an address 
delivered at Des Moines, Iowa, on February 1, 1916, 



86 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

at the same place where the "quitters" were so recently 
gibbeted : 

"There are actually men In America who are preach- 
ing war, who are preaching the duty of the United 
States to do what it never would before — seek en- 
tanglements in the controversies which have arisen 
on the other side of the water — abandon its habitual 
and traditional policy and deliberately engage in the 
conflict which is engulfing the rest of the world. I do 
not know what the standards of citizenship of these 
gentlemen may be. I only know that I for one can 
not subscribe to those standards." 

It was an unspeakable thing to abandon our "habitual 
and traditional policy" and seek entanglements in Old- 
World controversies then, when actual conflict was 
threatening our very safety, but "only the selfishness 
or ignorance or a spirit of Bolshevism" is debating it 
now. Surely the American people will not compare 
without understanding. 

FORCED TO DECLARE WASi 

We went to war precisely for the reason uttered in 
the preamble which I quoted, forced to action by the 
conscience and self-respect of the American people. 
Perhaps the people were greater than their govern- 
ment in conscience and self-respect, but they were not 
great enough to overcome the costly months of delay. 
But once we were committed it was unalterable. 
"Quitters" in Congress? They were trampled deep 
beneath the forward march. Congress submerged 
itself, abdicated, to give limitless power to the com- 



3AFEGUARDING AMERICA ^7. 

mander in chief. No finer surrender of power is 
recorded in history, no lawful dictatorship offers paral- 
lel in the story of free government. I am not com- 
plaining, I am commending ! It was necessary to speed 
the winning. 

"Quitters" among the people ? Not one among the 
millions of patriotic Americans. We pledged all we 
had, our wealth, our lives, our sacred honor. It was 
the committal unalterable. Germany was making war 
on us, and had to be brought to terms. Let me record 
it for all time — the unquitting resolution of these 
United States. Suppose poor, weak but proud and 
brave Serbia had been trampled to earth and utterly 
destroyed; suppose brave heroic Belgium had been 
driven wholly into the sea and none but her enslaved 
people remained to cherish the story of her opening 
guns of defense ; suppose Italy, resolute and courage- 
ous, in spite of her difficulties, had been brought to 
terms ; suppose Russia in her betrayal had joined her 
German masters and sought to destroy the world's 
civilization as she did her own ; suppose noble, heroic, 
self-sacrificing, respiritualized France had been brought 
to her knees, wounded unto death ; suppose determined, 
fearless and powerful Great Britain had been starved 
and brought to terms as the Central Powers had 
planned; suppose all these disasters had attended, 
then, even then, this republic would have gone on and 
on and on until Germany was brought to terms, be- 
cause without established American rights there could 
be no American nation, and we had rather perish than 
fail to maintain them. 



REDEDICATING AMERICA 



OUR TASK COMPLETED 

No, Senators, there were no "quitters" after the 
task was once assumed. We finished in triumph. An 
arrogant, offending military Germany is no more. 
That job was well done. But after it was done, having 
no concern for Europe's affairs, seeking nothing of 
territory, nothing of reparation — and getting none, 
let it be said — the sons of the republic wanted to 
come home, and the people of the United States 
wanted them home, and it was in the great heart of the 
republic to turn to the restoration, reestablish our nor- 
mal pursuits, and make the earliest recovery possible 
from the ravages and extravagances and wastes and 
sorrows of war. 

That is not a "quitterV program. That was dis- 
tinctly and becomingly the American policy, the wish 
of highest American devotion. We had never entered 
any alliances. The treaty speaks again and again 
of the "principal allied and associated powers." We 
were the "associated power," because when Germany 
committed her acts of war against us, we joined the 
warfare of the Allies against her and made common 
cause against the common enemy. We had no com- 
pacts, no covenants, no secret arrangements. Alas! 
We did not even know the secret agreements the Allies 
had. It would have little mattered, perhaps, had we 
not proclaimed overmuch against secret agreements 
and proposed a new birth for all the world. 

We did cooperate. We fought under French com- 
mand, and our soldiers were comrades to French, 
to Italian, to Belgian, and to British, because we were 



SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 89 

battling for the defeat of a common enemy. We paid 
our own way to the last farthing. We gave of treasure 
without reckoning, and Americans died not as allies 
but as Americans. That was the one supreme con- 
solation in every hero's last living thought. Crusaders, 
seeking a human relationship that God Himself hath 
not wrought? No! They were heroic defenders of 
these United States. 

NOT COMMITTED TO LEAGUE 

It may be recorded, Senators, that America finished 
the task for which her sons were sent to Europe, and 
the unfinished work which is now alleged is an after- 
thought, to which America was never committed, about 
which our people were never consulted, concerning 
w^hich our very peace commissioners were not advised. 
No one questions the lofty aims of President Wilson, 
no one would hinder consistent endeavor for all desir- 
able attainment. No one opposes because the Ameri- 
can participation is exclusively Wilsonian, or because 
the covenant is of British conception. It is the cov- 
enant itself and the effect of our committal which 
calls for consideration. 

It is appropriate, however, to dispel some of the 
illusions about it being the expressed hope and guaran- 
teed security of small nations and struggling peoples. 
They had no voice in its making. Their protests were 
stifled at the moment of its adoption. Eyewitnesses to 
the submission of this super-concept to the peace com- 
missioners testify that this "covenant is a perversion 
of what men who really favored a league of nations 
intended and wished for." I quote Mr. Frank P. 



90 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

Walsh, once its ardent supporter, now protesting its 
adoption. When Mr. Walsh appeared before our 
committee he was asked if the assembled peace com- 
missioners, representing nations, great or small, ex- 
pressed any surprise when the covenant was presented. 
Mr. Walsh replied : 

"Oh, it was very marked. They jumped up all over 
the place to make protests. Man after man got up. 
You know there was an awful censorship upon this 
whole business." 

AUTOCRACY OF PEACE 

There was no debate. It was the oflfering of the 
big four, the autocracy of peace, not submitted to de- 
bate by the commissioners signing, and is now too 
sacred for modification by this body which must speak 
for America. I believe it designed to establish super- 
government, and no explanation nor apology has al- 
tered my opinion. It may consider any questions affect- 
ing the affairs of the world, and the council's decision 
is a binding thing, else language has no dependable 
meaning. Supergovernment was the great dream, 
and the very essentials of supergovernment were in- 
corporated. If one believes in surrendered nationality, 
if one prefers world citizenship to American citizen- 
ship, which I delight to boast, the covenant is ideal. 
But it ends democracy instead of promoting it, and 
it means international autocracy for all who accept it 
without specific reservations. 

The authority, as written, is limitless. Any national 
sovereignty may be invaded. The authority which can 
prevent war can make it, and it will. The president 



SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 91 

has said the council may even consider internal con- 
troversies which threaten world peace, and he holds 
out the promise that the league will correct the in- 
justices of the peace commission which created it. 
If that does not mean the assumption of power to 
extend to limitless authority, the promise is not sincere. 
On the other hand, it means abandoned self-determi- 
nation for every member nation, and unending inter- 
ference and invited conflict with nations outside the 
autocratic circle. 

NATIONALITY SACRIFICED 

No one has made the venture to estimate our possible 
obligations. Only last Saturday the cable told us how 
a member of the French chamber of deputies had ad- 
vocated that the league of nations should assume a 
proportion of the French war debt. It does not matter 
that we renounced all reparation ourselves, it does not 
matter that we expended without measure, it neverthe- 
less appears that in the new idealism there is a "touch" 
of the practical. Europe is calling for our soldiers and 
we are sending, though our task was ended last No- 
vember. Europe wants our sponsorship, to enforce 
the new alignments, and wants our treasure to lighten 
her own burdens. Involvement piles upon involve- 
ment and responsibility upon responsibility, until inde- 
pendence of action fades into precious memory and 
nationality becomes a lost inheritance. 

Senators, no one in all the land has greater pride 
than I feel in having this nation and our people exert 
a becoming influence on the progressive march of civ- 
ilization. We can not hope to remain utterly aloof, 



92 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

and would not choose a complete isolation if such a 
course were possible. We are the exemplars of rep- 
resentative democracy, and we have seemingly devel- 
oped the most dependable popular government in the 
world. We know that no pure democracy ever sur- 
vived, and we know that republics have failed before. 
We ought and do realize that the fundamentals of the 
United States are not of new discovery, and we are 
yet but a child among the nations in point of years, 
though our achievement would glorify centuries of de- 
velopment. My point is that civilization is not ex- 
clusively ours, or justice solely an American conception, 
or righteousness wholly a New-World development. 
We are committed to them all, and we are the best 
exemplars of unselfishness in the world. 

AMERICAN CONSCIENCE FIXES OBLIGATION 

Our merits are appraised and our weaknesses arc 
known. We have power and wealth and conscience; 
we do have lofty sentiments and high ideals. We 
would have ours the best example of national right- 
eousness in all the world, and influence the world ac- 
cording to the confidence and respect we command. 
We do not need Europe or Asia to define our moral 
obligations, we do not need the Old World to quicken 
the American conscience. The obligations to civiliza- 
tion are not designated by men, they are written by 
the hand of divinity which records the onward march. 
No league, no council of any league, no assembly of 
any league can ever appeal to the American conscience 
as will the voice of intelligent and deliberate public 



SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 93 

opinion. Aye, and if we proclaim democracy to the 
world, we must not crush it at its hearthstone. 

Must we have this particular covenant to save us 
from European broils and Old-World conflicts, as the 
president asserts? In a hundred years of American 
development and growing influence no war involved 
us, though one hundred and twenty-six wars are re- 
corded in that period. We were not involved in 1898 ; 
we went because conscience was impelling. I quite 
agree that Germany might have preferred to respect 
our rights than to involve us in the late world war if 
she had believed we would answer affront with armed 
defense, but the president was too busy then keeping 
us out of war to utter a vigorous American warning. 
Germany held us in a contempt which one militant 
American voice in authority might have dissolved, but 
we delayed until two million fighting sons of the re- 
public shot Germany to respectful understanding. 

RESPECT FOR AMERICAN RIGHTS 

We have settled it for all time, league or no league^ 
peace or no peace, war or no war, the rights of this na- 
tion and the rights of our citizens must and will be 
respected at home or abroad, on land or sea, every- 
where an American may go on a lawful and righteous 
mission under the shining sun. To adopt any other 
policy, to call an international council to destroy the 
American spirit, would rend the life of the republic. 
It may be very old-fashioned, sirs, it may be reaction- 
ary, it may be shocking to pacifist and dreamer alike, 
but I choose for our own people, a hundred millions or 



94 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

more, the right to search the American conscience and 
prescribe our own obHgations to ourselves and the 
world^s civilization. 

Let us pause for a moment to note the tendency of 
the propagandists of the hour and the proponents of 
the league. There is a drive to nationalize industry, 
to denationalize governments, and internationalize the 
world. All are contrary to everything that made us 
what we are, all stamp failure on all we have wrought, 
and propose paralysis instead of the virile activity 
which sped us on to achievement. 

SIGNIFICANCE OF NATIONALISM 

Nationalism was the vital force that turned the 
dearly wrought freedom of the republic to a living, 
impelling power. Nationalism inspired, assured, up- 
builded. In nationalism was centered all the hopes, all 
the confidence, all the aspirations of a developing peo- 
ple. Nationalism has turned the retreating processions 
of the earth to the onward march to accomplishment, 
and has been the very shield of democracy wherever 
its banners were unfurled. Why, Senators, nationality 
was the hope of every appealing delegation which came 
to our committee in the name of democracy. It was 
nationality that conceived the emergence of new na- 
tions and the revival of old ones out of the ashes of 
consuming warfare. Nationality is the call of the 
heart of liberated peoples, and the dream of those to 
whom freedom becomes an undying cause. It was the 
guiding light, the song, the prayer, the consummation 
for our own people, although we were never assured 



SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 95 

indissoluble union until the Civil War was fought. 
Can any red-blooded American consent now, when we 
have come to understand its priceless value, to merge 
our nationality into internationality, merely because 
brotherhood and fraternity and fellowship and peace 
are soothing and appealing terms ? 

Oh, sirs, I know it is denied. I can understand the 
indignant denial. I will not challenge its sincerity. It 
would be very disheartening to believe that any Amer- 
ican in official position, or who donned the garb of an 
armed defender, knowingly assents to surrendered 
nationality. I may be wrong, but I elect to take no 
chances. If this league as negotiated can do all that its 
proponents have promised, it can tighten its grip on 
the destiny of nations and make our inspiring nation- 
ality only a memory. Extravagant utterance? Well, 
establish the council without strong reservations pro- 
tecting our freedom of action, and establish the as- 
sembly with its powers unhindered by reservations, 
and no man can foresee the exercise of authority by 
the league of great powers, against whom small nations 
w^ill protest in vain. Suppose it proves all that is 
claimed in discouraging war, which many honestly 
doubt. Let me say in passing that an able and experi- 
enced officer of the army, stalwart in his Americanism 
and his love of country, whose devotion has been 
proven again and again, and who not only fought in 
the late war but is a student of European affairs, said 
to me not a month ago : ''Senator, as a military man, I 
ought to favor this league because it means war after 
war and constant activity in the work for which I am 



^ redf:dicating America 

trained. But I pray in my American heart you will 
never commit us to it, because I can see involvements 
and regrets unending." 

AMERICAN SAFETY AT STAKE 

But suppose it makes for the promised peace, I still 
prefer, and the great majority of Americans still pre- 
fer, to be the keepers of our national conscience and 
let Europe pass upon its moral obligations while we 
righteously meet our own. 

Only the other day the president called upon the op- 
ponents of this league to "Put up or shut up." Among 
opponents he classes reservationists as well as those 
who would destroy it all. A good many people have 
been "putting up" in this country. Perhaps they have 
a right to speak. But in modified terms the president 
is uttering that very familiar demand, "If you won't 
have this, what have you to offer?" It is the well- 
known call for constructive proposals in place of ob- 
structive discussion. There are times when obstruction 
justifies the call for something constructive. But this 
situation. Senators, calls for action preservative. When 
some one proposes an impossible thing it is not fit chal- 
lenge to demand a constructive substitute. The pres- 
ervation of American safety is the main thing. A safe- 
guarded inheritance is infinitely better than the wasted 
riches of nationality. 

Nobody is going to "shut up." Democracy does not 
demand such a surrender. Men in this body have a 
sworn duty to perform, no less important to ratifica- 
tion than presidential authority is to negotiation. A 
senator may be as jealous of his constitutional duty 



SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 97 

as the president is jealous of an international con- 
coction, especially if we cling to the substance as well 
as the form of representative democracy. The dic- 
tatorship was for the war only, and does not abide in 
the aftermath. 

PATRIOTS SAVE AMERICA 

Members of this body are not insensible to the criti- 
cism of their actions, official criticism, and the com- 
plaints of constituents. There are expressions of ap- 
proval, too. Men have not been blind to the unusual 
mail from home ; they have appraised letters inspired, 
letters perfunctory, letters from the heart, letters urg- 
ing support, letters breathing deep alarm. I have 
heard the charge of partisanship and the threat of de- 
stroyed party and the prophecy of individual political 
ignominy. But I record it now, because it ought to be 
recorded ; the soul of this discussion is splendidly pa- 
triotic. It is not confined to one side of the chamber 
nor to one side of the pending issue. I yield the be- 
lief in sincerity even to those who do not grant it. 
More, the radical, the unalterable opponents of the 
league and the treaty have rendered a real service to 
this country. I do not agree to all they urge in oppo- 
sition, but I credit them with the awakening of Amer- 
ica, without which the republic might have been un- 
consciously betrayed. 

To what conclusion am I leading ? Speaking for my- 
self alone, voicing no faction, no group, no party, I 
do not see how any senator can decide upon his final 
vote till the disputed amendments and proposed reser- 
vations shall have the stamp of the decision of a Sen- 



98 REDEDICATING AMERICA ' 

ate majority. I can never vote to ratify without safe- 
guards. I am not yet persuaded to cast a ratifying vote 
without amendments. I have listened to the commit- 
tee's earnest discussions. I bear witness that there 
was no fixed program of action in advance. I have 
sought to retain a fairly open mind, withholding un- 
alterable utterance in the face of the charge of wab- 
bling indecision. 

RESERVATIONS ARE ESSENTIA!. 

I mean to vote for the amendments proposed by the 
committee. They ought to be accepted. If the presi- 
dent is correct in declaring the proposed reservations 
will send the treaty back, then amendments will not un- 
duly delay. Suppose there is delay? Civilized peo- 
ples are not supposed to move unthinkingly in creating 
the surpassing covenant of all the ages. This is an 
epoch-making treaty, no matter what its terms pre- 
scribe. 

America need not fear the ill-will of our allied cov- 
enanters. Their need for cooperation is not so crit- 
ical as when the German armies were battering the 
western battle fronts, but Europe needs us infinitely 
more than we need Europe. The aftermath is little 
less difficult than the problems of war itself. We can 
carry the banners of America to the new Elysium, 
even though we have to furl them before we enter. 

RIGHTEOUSNESS IS GOAL 

It is well to do any job right. It is imperative to do 
a mighty job right, especially when it involves the fate 
of all civilization. If the world is to start all over, it 



SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 99 

ought to start with the square deal. The treaty has not 
written it; the square deal was reserved for informal 
promises not uttered in the supreme document. 
Though we performed a great service in armed battling 
for a preserved civilization, we have yet a greater 
service to render to the same civilization by making 
the covenant of peace everlastingly righteous. 

All fair men realize the embarrassment incident to 
the Shantung award. Perhaps we can not change it. 
No one believes we mean to go to war to restore to 
China what Germany looted and Japan traded for. 
But we need not be a party to an international im- 
morality that challenges our every utterance about lofty 
purposes and the reign of justice. I want it recorded, 
for all the world to read, that America esteems her 
unarmed friend no less than she respects her armed 
associate. 

If reservations are to send the German treaty and 
league covenant back, we ought to amend fully, we 
ought to write into the text the things which America 
is thinking. There has been inclination to yield some 
points rather than necessitate prolonged delay. We 
now know there are to be reservations, unmistakable 
reservations, else there will be no treaty. They must 
speak in clearest terms. The covenant Is unthinkable 
without them. These reservations must be strong and 
unmistakable. I could no more support "mild reser- 
vations" than I could sanction mild Americanism. 
These reservations come of a purpose to protect Amer- 
ica first, and still save a framework on which to build 
Intelligent cooperation. These reservations come of 
a desire to offer opportunity for^ clearing JiousQ f oi; 



100 REDEDICATING AMERICA ^ ^^ 

the consciences of peoples. These reservations declare 
that we hold for ourselves the right to maintain our 
own peace, and are willing to encourage Europe's 
effort toward the great desideratum. But in these 
reservations there must be no surrender of the basic 
things on which this nation was builded to the present- 
day height of world eminence. 

Without the amendments we shall be remiss in utter- 
ing the conscience of the republic ; without any reser- 
vations we shall be recreant to duty. This is not the 
universal thought. There is dispute about it being the 
majority thought of the American millions, but I be- 
lieve it will become the deliberate judgment of Amer- 
ica. 

MUST PRESERVE INHERITANCE 

If such a course delays reconstruction, let recon- 
struction wait. It awaited the long negotiation at 
Paris, it waited amid barter, it can await correction 
where the blunder was made. You have heard the call 
of finance, voicing its impatience. Let finance recall 
that fundamental Americanism transcends its impor- 
tance for to-day and the morrow, too. Industry calls 
for normal conditions of formal peace. Let industry 
remember that nationalism is its fostering influence, 
and internationalism means to merge its interests with 
the industries of the world. Momentous achievements 
are not wrought in impatience. 

Out of the ferment, the turmoil, the debts, and echo- 
ing sorrows ; out of the appalling waste and far-reach- 
ing disorder; out of the threats against orderly 
government and the assaults on our present-day civil- 



SAFEGUARDING AMERICA 101 

izatlon, I think I can see the opening way for America. 
We must preserve the inheritance and hold sensitive 
the conscience which has guided our national life. We 
must cling to just government and hold to intelligent 
and deliberate public opinion as shield and buckler to 
representative democracy. We must hold to civil lib- 
erty, no matter who assails or in what garb he appears, 
and we must hold equal opportunity and the reward 
of merit no less vital to a living republic than liberty 
itself. 

We do not need and we do not mean to live within 
and for ourselves alone, but we do mean to hold our 
ideals safe from foreign incursion. W^e have com- 
manded respect and confidence, commanded them in 
friendship and the associations of peace, commanded 
them in the conflicts and comradeships of war. It is 
easily possible to hold the world's high estimate 
through righteous relationships. If our ideals of civ- 
ilization are the best in the world, and I proudly be- 
lieve that they are, then we ought to send the American 
torch-bearers leading on to fulfillment. America aided 
in saving civilization ; Americans will not fail civiliza- 
tion in the deliberate advancements of peace. We are 
willing to give, but we resent demands. 

MUST SAVE SOUL OF AMERICA 

I do not believe, Senators, that it is going "to break 
the heart of the world" to make this covenant right, or 
at least free from perils which would endanger our 
own independence. But it were better to witness this 
rhetorical tragedy than destroy the soul of this great 
republic. 



102 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

It is a very alluring thing, Mr. President, to do what 
the world has never done before. No republic has 
permanently survived. They have flashed, illumined, 
and advanced the world, and faded or crumbled. I 
want to be a contributor to the abiding republic. None 
of us to-day can be sure that it shall abide for gen- 
erations to come, but we may hold it unshaken for our 
day, and pass it on to the next generation preserved in 
its integrity. This is the unending call of duty to men 
of every civilization ; it is distinctly the American call 
to. duty of every man who believes we have come the 
nearest to dependable popular government the world 
has yet witnessed. 

Let us have an America walking erect, unafraid, 
concerned about its rights and ready to defend them, 
proud of its citizens and committed to defend them, 
and sure of its ideals and strong to support them. We 
are a hundred miUions and more to-day, and if the 
miracle of the first century of national life may be re- 
peated in the second the millions of to-day will be the 
myriads of the future. I like to think, sirs, that out 
of the discovered soul of this republic and through 
our preservative actions in this supreme moment of 
human progress we shall hold the word American the 
proudest boast of citizenship in all the world. 



CHAPTER IV 

Americanism 

Address Delivered before the Ohio Society of New 

York, at the Waldorf Hotel, New York 

City, January lo, 1^20 

Mr. Toastmaster, Ladies and Gentlemen — The 
topic of the evening makes it befitting to allude to the 
contemporaneousness of the birth of Ohio and the be- 
ginning of Americanism. Ohio became a definite part 
of the Northwest Territory in 1787, and the first flam- 
ing torch of Americanism was lighted in framing the 
Federal Constitution in that momentous year. Every- 
thing else American is preliminary or subsidiary. 

The Pilgrims signed their simple and majestic cov- 
enant a full century and a half before, and set aflame 
their beacon of liberty on the coast of Massachusetts, 
and other pioneers of New-World freedom were rear- 
ing their new standards of liberty from Jamestown to 
Plymouth for five generations before Lexington and 
Concord heralded a new era ; and it was all American 
in the destined result, yet all of it lacked the soul of 
nationality. In simple truth, there was no thought 
of nationality in the revolution for American independ- 
ence. The colonists were resisting a wrong and free- 
dom was their solace. Once it was achieved, nation- 
ality was the only agency suited to its preservation. 

103 



104 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

Ours was the physically incomparable America, so 
enriched by God's bounty and so incalculable in its 
possibilities that adventurous Spaniard and developing 
Englishman stood only at the gateway and marveled. 
Ours were American colonies in name, but the col- 
onists were still echoing the prejudices and aspirations 
of the lands from which they came. There were con- 
flicting ideas, varying conditions, and contending jeal- 
ousies, but no common confidence, no universal pride, 
no illuminating spirit. These essentials came with the 
adoption of the Federal Constitution and the riveting 
of union, and the star of the American republic was set 
aglow in the world firmament on the day that ratifica- 
tion was effected. 

BIRTH OF AMERICANISM 

On that day Americanism began, robed in nation- 
ality. On that day the American republic began the 
blazed trail of representative popular government. On 
that day representative democracy was proclaimed the 
safe agency of highest human freedom. On that day 
America headed the forward procession of civil, hu- 
man and religious liberty, which ultimately will effect 
the liberation of all mankind. 

I am not thinking to magnify its comparative excel- 
lence, its charm of simplicity, or its exalted place 
among the written fundamental laws. I am recalling 
the Federal Constitution as the very base of all Amer- 
icanism, as the ark of the covenant of American lib- 
erty, as the very temple of equal rights, as the very 
foundation of all our worthy aspirations. More, it 
was the supreme pledge of coordinate government by 



AMERICANISM 105 

law, with the sponsorship of majorities, the protected 
rights of minorities, and freedom from usurpation of 
power — the people to rule. 

Men ofttimes sneer nowadays like it were some 
useless relic of the formative period, seemingly unmind- 
ful that on its guaranties rests the liberty which per- 
mits ungrateful sneering. Others pronounce it time- 
worn and antiquated and unsuited to modern libert}^ 
but they forget that the world's orderly freedom has 
come of its inspiration. Perhaps its very simplicity, 
its utter naturalness for a popular government under 
majority rule, has led to scant appreciation if not un- 
mind fulness. But it does abide and ever will so long 
as the republic survives. 

CONSTITUTION IS SACRED 

The trouble is that its sacredness, if not forgotten, 
has been too little proclaimed. Most of us think it too 
righteous to assail and too essential to ignore, and we 
have held the superstructure so nearly ideal that for 
more than a hundred years we have had no peace-time 
statute to make seditious utterance a crime. Appar- 
ently we have held the freedom of speech which the 
Constitution guarantees more sacred than the guaran- 
teeing instrument. I have come to think it is funda- 
mentally and patriotically American to say there isn't 
room anywhere in these United States for any one who 
preaches destruction of the government which is within 
the Constitution. 

This patriotically, if not divinely, inspired funda- 
mental law fits every real American citizen, and the 
man who can not fit himself to it is not fit for Amer- 



106 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

ican citizenship nor deserving of our hospitality. It 
fully covers all classes and masses in its guaranteed 
liberties, and any class or mass that opposes the Con- 
stitution is against the country and the flag. 

DUTY OF CITIZENSHIP 

This republic has never feared an enemy from v^^ith- 
out. It no longer intends to be menaced by enemies 
from within. If any man seeks the advantages of 
American citizenship, let him assume the duties of that 
citizenship. If he wishes the freedom of America, 
let him subscribe to freedom's protection. If he craves 
our hospitality, let him not abuse it. If he wishes to 
profit by American opportunity, let him join in making 
the same opportunity open to others. One can not be 
half American and half European or half something 
else. This is the day for the ail-American. 

Nor can the foreigner hereafter be a prolonged vis- 
itor or resident alien, gathering the fruits of Amer- 
ican opportunity, assuming ,the privileges of a citizen 
without whole-heartedly plighting his faith of citizen- 
ship. I do not mean the mere perfunctory declaration 
and legal naturalization. I mean renounced allegiance 
to the land from which he came and a heart and soul 
consecration to this republic. It were better to leave 
some of our industrial work undone than to have the 
government undermined in its doing. 

But we must not accept the overwrought impression 
that the assault on stable American government is 
chargeable wholly or mainly to those of foreign birth 
who have not sworn American allegiance. The worst 
disloyalists and most effective conspirators wear the 



AMERICANISM 107 

garb of full-fledged American citizenship, iand many 
of them inherited American opportunity at their birth 
and turned liberty into license. The ignorant for- 
eigner is more a victim than a conspirator, because he 
has heard the gospel of revolution when no one 
preached the blessings of orderly government and the 
rewards of American opportunity. Agitator and revo- 
lutionist found profit in agitation. They learned the 
foreigner's language and thought his thoughts and 
reached his sympathies, and lied to his ignorant preju- 
dices, while the captains of American industry were 
counting dividends without concern for the human ele- 
ment in their making. There were exceptions to this 
crime of negligence, but in most instances the Amer- 
icans who invited and enlisted foreign activities to 
swell the man power of industry have neglected to 
teach the American language, failed to utter American 
sympathies, forgot to extend American fellowship, 
and omitted the revealment of the loftier ideals of 
American citizenship. The grind of the workshop 
alone is poor culture for that citizenship which makes 
the ideal republic. 

MUST PRACTISE AMERICANISM 

It is well enough to preach Americanism, and we 
ought. It is more important to practise it, and we 
must. In truth, my countrymen, we need practical 
Americanism in business as well as proclaimed Amer- 
icanism in politics. It is superb to lead in commerce 
and excel in industry — and no nation ever filled a bril- 
liant page in history until it reached industrial and 
commercial eminence — ^but the distinction is too costly 



108 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

if wrought in the neglected qualities of citizenship and 
attending unrest and ultimate revolution. 

It is well enough to be concerned about the quantity 
iand quality of our wares, but it is better to be sure of 
the spirit of the workers who make them. We must 
be thinking of men as well as materials and the condi- 
tions of making as well as marketing. The enhance- 
ment of conditions in twenty years is tribute to awak- 
ened American conscience, but the neglect of education 
Is the warning to American heedlessness. 

DEVOTION TO DUTY 

There must be concern about devotion to duty as 
well as dividends. There must be a thought of the 
eventful morrow as well as the golden day. It is of 
no avail merely to preach contentment. Content never 
lighted a furnace nor turned a wheel in all creation. 
It doesn't exist in the human being who is really worth 
while. Mere subsistence does not make a citizen, and 
generous compensation without thrift blasts every hope 
of acquirement. 

What humanity most needs just now is understand- 
ing. The present-day situation is more acute because 
we are in the ferment that came of war and war's 
aftermath. Ours was a fevered world, sometimes 
flighty, as we used to say in the village, to suggest 
fever's fancies or delirium. I forbear specification. 
But we are slow getting normal again, and the world 
needs sanity as it seldom needed it before. 

Many have thought the ratification of the peace 
treaty and its league of nations would make us normal. 



^ AMERICANISM. 109 

but that is the plea of the patent-medicine fakir, 
whose one remedy will marvelously cure every ill. 
Undoubtedly formal peace will help, and I would 
gladly speed the day, if we sacrifice nothing vitally 
American. Yet as a matter of fact actual peace pre- 
vails and commerce has resumed its wonted way. 

BACK TO NORMAL 

Normal thinking will help more. And normal liv- 
ing will have the effect of a magician's wand, para- 
doxical as the statement seems. The world does deeply 
need to get normal, and liberal doses of mental science 
freely mixed with resolution will help mightily. I do 
not mean the old order will be restored. It will never 
come again. A world war's upheaval which ends au- 
tocracies and wipes out dynasties and multiplies cost 
of government, an upheaval which shifts the sacred 
ratio of 16 to 1 until silver is the more sacred, sweeps 
humanity beyond any return to precise pre-war condi- 
tions. 

But there is a sane normalcy due under the new con* 
ditions, to be reached in deliberation and understand- 
ing. And all men must understand and join in reach- 
ing it. Certain fundamentals are unchangeable and 
everlasting. Life without toil never was and never 
can be. Ease and competence are not to be seized in 
frenzied envy; they are the reward of thrift and in- 
dustry and denial. There can be no excellence without 
great labor. There is no reward except as it is mer- 
ited. Lowered cost of living and increased cost of pro- 
duction are an economic fraud. Capital makes possi- 



no REDEDICATINa AMERICA 

ble while labor produces, and neither ever achieved 
without the other, and both of them together never 
wrought a success without genius and management. 
No one of them, through the power of great wealth, 
the force of knowledge, or the might of great numbers 
is above the law, and no one of them shall dominate 
a free people. 

SUPXIEMACY OF LAW 

There can be no liberty without security, and there 
can be no security without the supremacy of law and 
the majesty of just government. In the gleaming 
Americanism of the Constitution there is neither fear 
nor favor, but there are equal rights to all, equal op- 
portunities beckoning to every man, and justice un- 
trammeled. The government which surrenders to the 
conspiracies of an influential few or yields to the in- 
timidation of the organized many does justice to 
neither and none and dims the torch of Americanism 
which must light our way to safety. 

Governmental policies change and laws are altered 
to meet the changed conditions which attend all human 
progress. There are orderly processes for these nec- 
essary changes. Let no one proclaim the Constitution 
unresponsive to the conscience of the republic. We 
have recently witnessed its amendment with less than 
eighteen months intervening between submission and 
ratification, with some manifestation of sorrow mark- 
ing the fundamental change. It promptly responds to 
American conviction and is the rock on which is 
builded the temple of orderly liberty and the guaran- 
teed freedom of the American republic. 



AMERICANISM 111 



CIVIL LIBERTY AT STAKE 

The insistent problem of the day, magnified in the 
madness of war and revealed in the extreme reaction 
from hateful and destroyed autocracy to misapplied 
and bolshevist democracy, like the pathos of impotent 
Russia, is the preservation of civil liberty and its guar- 
anties. Let Russia experiment in her fatuous folly 
until the world is warned anew by her colossal trag- 
iedy. And let every clamorous advocate of the red 
regime go to Russia and revel in its crimsoned reign. 
This is law-abiding America ! 

Our American course is straight ahead, with liberty 
under the law, and freedom glorified in righteous re- 
straint. Reason illumines our onward path, and de- 
liberate, intelligent public opinion reveals every pit- 
fall and byway which must be avoided. America 
spurns every committal to the limits of mediocrity and 
bids every man to climb to the heights and rewards 
him as he merits it. This is the essence of liberty and 
made us what we are. Our system may be imperfect, 
but under it we have wrought to world astonishment, 
and we are only fairly begun. 

HONEST LIVING IS SOLUTION 

It would halt the great procession to time our steps 
with the indolent, the lazy, the incapable, or the sul- 
lenly envious. Nor can we risk the course sometimes 
suggested by excessive wealth and its ofttimes insolent 
assumption of power, but we can practise thrift and 
industry, we can live simply and commend righteous 



112 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

achievement, we can make honest success an inspira- 
tion to succeed, and march hopefully on to the chorus 
of liberty, opportunity and justice. 

Sometimes we must go beneath the surface gulf 
stream to find the resistless currents of the great ocean. 
It little matters what a man proclaims in an ephem- 
eral outcry for fancied reformation, you get the true 
undercurrent when you learn his aspiration for his 
children and his children's children. He stands with 
his generation between yesterday and the morrow, 
eager to lift his children to a little higher plane than 
mediocrity can bridge and which socialism never 
reaches. He wants to hand on American freedom un- 
abridged; he wants to bequeath the waters of Amer- 
ican political life unpolluted; he would bestow the 
quality of opportunity unaltered and the security of 
just government unendangered. The underwriting is 
in the complete and rejoicing Americanism of every 
citizen of the republic. 

MUST PRESERVE NATIONALISM 

Mr. Toastmaster, we have been hearing lately of the 
selfishness of nationality, and It has been urged that 
we must abandon It in order to perform our full duty 
to humanity and civilization. Let us hesitate before 
we surrender the nationality which is the very soul of 
highest Americanism. This republic has never failed 
humanity or endangered civilization. We have been 
tardy about it, like when we were proclaiming democ- 
racy and neutrality while we ignored our national 
rights, but the ultimate and helpful part we played in 



AMERICANISM 113 

the great war will be the pride of Americans so long 
as the world recites the story. 

We do not mean to hold aloof, we choose no isola- 
tion, we shun no duty. I like to rejoice in an American 
conscience and in a big conception of our obligations 
to liberty, justice and civilization. Aye, and more, 
I like to think of Columbia's helping hand to new re- 
publics which are seeking the blessings portrayed in 
our example. But I have a confidence in our America 
that requires no council of foreign powers to point the 
way of American duty. We wish to counsel, cooperate 
and contribute, but we arrogate to ourselves the keep- 
ing of the American conscience and every concept of 
our moral obligations. It is fine to idealize, but it is 
very practical to make sure our own house is in per- 
fect order before we attempt the miracle of the Old- 
World stabilization. 

AMERICA FIRST 

Call it the selfishness of nationality if you will, I 
think it an inspiration to patriotic devotion — 

To safeguard America first. 

To stabilize America first. 

To prosper America first. 

To think of America first. 

To exalt America first. 

To Hve for and revere America first. 

We may do more than prove exemplars to the 
world of enduring, representative democracy where 
the Constitution and its liberties are unshaken. We 
may go on securely to the destined fulfillment and 



114 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

make a strong and generous nation's contribution to 
human progress, forceful in example, generous in con- 
tribution, helpful in all suffering, and fearless in all 
conflicts. 

Let the internationalist dream and the Bolshevist de- 
stroy. God pity him "for whom no minstrel raptures 
swell." In the spirit of the republic we proclaim 
Americanism and acclaim America. 



CHAPTER y 

Theodore Roosevelt 

Ohio Legislative Memorial Address Before a Joint 
Convention of the Eighty-third General As- 
sembly, January 2Q, ipip 

Gentlemen of the General Assembly — I stood 
before the flag-draped casket in the little church at 
Oyster Bay, amid simplicity so rigid that one could 
not help remarking it, and yielded to conflicting emo- 
tions. I wondered if by some fitting miracle an in- 
animate flag could mourn. One could not see the cas- 
ket — only its form — because the vision was filled with 
the flag, and it seemed to me the colors clung as though 
sorrowing at the loss of their most fearless defender. 
One little noted the floral tributes, one was little con- 
cerned about eminent statesmen and famous writers 
and military chieftains and high officials who had 
gathered with neighbors and friends — political and 
personal friends — in reverent sorrow for the long fare- 
well. My own ears were deaf to the reading of the 
ritual and the recital of his favorite hymn, I was think- 
ing of the flag and the soulless form it draped in 
jealous sorrow. Great citizens had passed before. Be- 
loved executives, heroic soldiers and far-seeing states- 
men — all had come to the inevitable, gither too soon 

115 



116 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

or in the fulness of distinguished hves — and the na^ 
tion had mourned, and peoples sorrowed, and poten- 
tates had sympathized, but there was a distinct con- 
viction that the flag lost its bravest defender when 
Theodore Roosevelt passed from life to the eternal. A 
flaming spirit of American patriotism was gone. A 
great void had come, and there was none to fill it. 

EMINENT AMERICAN 

Measured from any view-point Colonel Roosevelt 
was one of the eminent Americans of all times, and 
history will write him one of the most conspicuous 
figures in all American history. I do not underrate 
the eminence which has gone before, nor doubt that 
great and distinguished Americans will follow, but in 
any appraisal Colonel Roosevelt's name wall be in- 
separably linked with the finding of the American soul, 
with the great awakening and consecration. Now and 
hereafter let it be said : "Here was a great and coura- 
geous American, who called to the slumbering spirit 
of the republic and made it American in fact as well 
as in name." 

I say it after full deliberation, and free from all in- 
clinations which characterize hero-worship, I believe 
Colonel Roosevelt to have been the most courageous 
American of all times. He not only believed, he pro- 
claimed and acted. He was not only American in his 
own heart and soul, but he believed every man who 
wore the habiliments should be an American in every 
heart-beat, and commit himself to simple and unfail- 
ing Americanism. 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT 117 



EXALTED BY AMERICANISM 

It was the mastering passion, the supreme end. Men 
thought of him first as a warrior, but it was his all- 
encompassing Americanism which made him one. His- 
torians rank him high as a statesman. It was his 
Americanism that exalted him. Many believed him 
to have become the consummate politician — and he was 
• — but he put his Americanism high above political 
plans and practises. Not a few careful observers be- 
lieve that Colonel Roosevelt lost the Republicans the 
election in 1916, and I have heard him say the conten- 
tion may be well founded. But he was battling for a 
bigger thing than party triumph, and he put that big- 
ger thing far above and beyond party success. He be- 
lieved our involvement in the world war was inevita- 
ble, and was seeking to awaken the republic. He saw 
the purpose to rend the loyal concord of American 
citizenship, and bore aloft the torch to lead us from 
the perils of pacificism and indecision. He never 
turned back. He never counted the political cost. 
Though he thought to submit his national leadership 
again in 1920, and knew the perils in criticism and 
truth-telling, he struck fearlessly at every menacing 
thing, regardless of numbers involved, and smote di- 
vided loyalty and hyphenated Americanism at every 
turn. 

"Country first" was his supreme ideal, and "country 
first" was his unfailing practise. The words were em- 
blazoned in the oriflamme which enthused his follow- 
ers throughout a marvelously eventful career. 



118 REDEDICATING AMERICA 



SOUGHT FOREIGN SERVICE 

I sensed the depths of his convictions when Con- 
gress made it lawful for him to take a volunteer army 
to France, shortly after our entry in the war. We did 
not write his name in the law, but the country knew. I 
think a major-generalship appealed to his ambition, but 
he stipulated no rank. He wanted to recruit and re- 
spond to the call of threatened civilization. His critics 
misconstrued. I am sure I knew. He wanted to save 
the morale of suffering France and awaken the morale 
in this slumbering republic. In the retrospect I believe 
he rendered a greater service with voice and pen at 
home than was possible to perform with his sword in 
France. And somehow I am glad he remained a 
colonel — nay, the colonel. How significant it is, and 
what a tribute, that he has made the title of loftiest 
rank, he is "The Colonel" to all America, and one 
needs only to mention the title without the name to 
have it understood that he is speaking of the most em- 
inent colonel of all time. 

It would be futile to attempt a life review within the 
limitations befitting this occasion. He was many sided, 
and his strenuous career was full of great accomplish- 
ment. What history will recite is fairly known. What 
biography contains will be more revealing. History 
records events, biography reveals the men who give 
events to history. 

EXTRAORDINARY MANHOOD 

Colonel Roosevelt's extraordinary manhood, his ap- 
pealing, vigorous, fearless, American manhood is an 



THEODORE ROOSEVELT; 119 

inseparable thing from his great public career. He re- 
vealed it as the ranchman in the freedom of the West. 
He revealed it as the soldier in the world's first war 
for humanity. He revealed it in an administrative and 
executive office, in his vaster responsibilities, and it 
was the conspicuous side of him in the retirement to 
which he could not retire. It was the big thing to those 
who knew him best, and no man ever had faster and 
firmer friends. "Better be faithful than famous" was 
an expressed conviction, and he was not only its 
exemplar but he inspired faithfulness. No other man 
could have enlisted the following which went with him 
to certain and foreseen political disaster in 1912. Or 
did they go with him ? Perhaps it is nearer the truth 
to say he went with them. I have heard it said he ad- 
vised against the political division in that year of bit- 
terness and defeat, that he yielded to the pressure and 
judgment of friends and chose to be "faithful rather 
than famous." The retrospect recalls two notable re- 
vealments: he lost or broke few friendships; he was 
ever as willing to be convinced as he was convincing. 
The popular impression had him often domineering 
and insistent, but there were few American presidents 
who sought advice more widely or were more ready 
to accept. My own impressions concerning him, gath- 
ered from press, platform jand passing events, were 
largely altered by personal contact, and utterly changed 
by the revelations of those who knew him longer and 
better. Many thought the mighty hunter lacking in 
the general attributes, but he could be as gentle as he 
was strong, and as sympathetic as a mother touched by 
love. 



120 REDEDICATING AMERICA 



MAN OF ACTION 

He was, first of all, a man of action, and delighted 
in strenuosity and confessed his fondness for hurrah 
and parade. But he was not always performing on 
a public stage. One of the very big events in his ca- 
reer was the least conspicuous and was barely known, 
until recited in the biography of the late John Hay, 
who had served in his inherited Cabinet as secretary 
of state. Germany threatened the seizure of a port 
in Venezuela to enforce some financial claims of Ger- 
man citizens. President Roosevelt called in the Ger- 
man ambassador, and in a quiet demeanor that was 
ominous in itself, told him to tell the kaiser that unless 
he agreed to arbitrate the German contention within 
ten days Admiral Dewey would sail an American fleet 
with sealed instructions to give armed resistance to 
any attempt at German seizure. That was a message 
the kaiser could understand. The kaiser agreed to 
arbitrate. President Roosevelt publicly praised him 
for the peaceful proposal which the president himself 
so quietly yet firmly demanded. The great criminal, 
who afterward set the world aflame in 1914, had 
yielded to the firm assertion of American purpose, and 
the Monroe Doctrine was emphasized anew in the esti- 
mate of Old-World diplomacy. 

There was more of unparaded activity but no less 
effectiveness in dealing with the designing statesmen of 
Colombia in the establishment of a friendly republic 
in Panama, which left the money grabbers of the 
greater state begging for millions to this very hour, 
though the great interoceanic canal is long since a 



JHEODORE ROOSEVELT 121 

finished monument for all time to President Roose- 
velt's aggressive Americanism and our republic's ca- 
pacity to do big things. It is idle to speculate now, but 
I can not believe his stalwart Americanism would 
have ever sanctioned the surrender of its intended ad- 
vantages to American shipping. 

AWAKENED NATIONAL CONSCIENCE 

Perhaps his greatest work apart from his appeal- 
ing Americanism, and yet a vital part of it, was his 
crusade for a new order of things, a new conscience in 
the republic. We can appraise him now in the after- 
math of fuller understanding, and even those who 
most violently opposed him must confess his great part 
in an essential awakening. He did four years of 
arousing and uprooting. His far-seeing vision de- 
tected a dangerous drift. He cried out for govern- 
mental assertion of authority, lest government itself 
should be the governed. In his zest he was the rad- 
ical, as all crusaders are, but when he saw the business 
conscience of America awakened, he gladly welcomed 
constructive supersedure. He was really less the rad- 
ical than he ofttimes appeared, and sometimes spoke 
radically against his own judgment. The greatest blun- 
der of his career was made in this very chamber when 
he addressed the Constitutional Convention of 1912. 
He came against his own judgment and in yielding to 
insistent advice declared for the recall of judicial de- 
cisions. It is not surprising that one of his energy and 
courage should blunder, particularly in a period of 
tremendous conflict and crusading zeal. It was a mark 
of his greatness that he instantly recovered, and lost 



122 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

little of his hold and none of the respect of the Anxer- 
ican people. He incurred violent enmities, but none 
ever called him an unfair opponent. He struck as he 
spoke, straight from the shoulder, and he practised as 
he preached. In his virile American manhood he was 
the surpassing and inspiring example. In the fulness 
of mental and physical vigor, he was the great patri- 
otic sentinel, pacing the parapet of the republic, alert 
to danger and every menace and in love with duty and 
service and always unafraid. 

MADE AMERICA BETTER 

It is little to say that the republic is bigger and bet- 
ter and mightily advanced by his part in its glorious 
history, more American for his call to patriotism and 
more secure for his warning of perils. It is more to 
say he inspired those who follow to nobler manhood 
and higher ideals. 

It didn't seem quite in harmony with his untiring ac- 
tivity and unharnessed soul that its flame should fail 
in the quiet of slumber, but it was peace valiantly and 
triumphantly won, and the flames he lighted burned 
afresh and will light the way of a people whom he 
loved and who loved him as a great American. 



CHAPTER VI 

Relations with Theodore Roosevelt 

Public Address at Topeka, Kansas, March 8, 1920 

There has been widely distributed from my own 
state some quotations of utterances carried in 1912 in 
the Marion (Ohio) Star, of which I have been the 
sole or principal owner for the past thirty years. These 
quotations are distributed to appeal to the opposition 
to me on the part of the friends of that great out- 
standing American, Theodore Roosevelt. I magnify 
no posthumous claims to an intimate friendship with 
Colonel Roosevelt, and could have no title to his politi- 
cal mantle, even if such bestowal were possible in 
this republic. On the other hand, I vigorously opposed 
him in 1912 just as he typically opposed the regular 
wing of the Republican party to which I adhered. 

Theodore Roosevelt never did anything half-heart- 
edly. He preached the gospel of hitting and hitting 
hard for what he believed to be right. He expected his 
opponents to fight, and we were in a fight in 1912. I 
did my share of it in our newspaper and on the stump. 
Colonel Roosevelt and Mr. Taft were greatly es- 
tranged, but both were big enough to put aside their 
grief and bury their hostilities and make common ap- 
peal to the American people for a Republican victory 
in 1918. He and others came to new understanding. 

123 



124 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

My concord with Theodore Roosevelt came shortly 
after our party's defeat in 1916. He invited me to a 
conference and I gladly responded. We did not dwell 
long on the differences of 1912. That was an old 
story, he thought his course was justified and we 
jointly deplored the result, but he did insist we must 
all get together and save the country through a Repub- 
lican restoration; that the Republican party was the 
one agency through which to give highest service, and 
the compact of our council and cooperation was made 
then and there, and in many conferences afterward I 
came to know how deeply he felt the necessity of all 
Republicans uniting to effect the party supremacy so 
essential to the nation's good. It was his personal, 
rather than his political, wish that I should stand 
sponsor for the amendment to the army bill that made 
it possible for him to take a volunteer division to 
France, and I rejoiced over the enactment, though 
President Wilson would not accept it. But the big 
thing was that Theodore Roosevelt was keen to wipe 
out the differences of 1912, now buried beneath eight 
years of regrets, and look with hope to party triumph 
through united endeavor in 1920. 

If he had lived, he would have been our Republican 
nominee by acclamation. It is poor proof of devotion 
and poorer evidence of the inheritance of the political 
wisdom which marked his matchless career to parade 
the mistakes of 1912 to inspire a victory in 1920. 
More, it is not progressive. It is retrogressive. I 
choose a party and a leadership which appraises men 
and issues of to-day, and thinks not of the differences 
of yesterday, but the victory of to-morrow. 



CHAPTER VII 

JVlLLIAM McKlNLEY 

Address at the McKinley Memorial Dinner, Niles, 
Ohio, January 2^, ip20 

Mr. Toastmaster and Gentlemen — Much is being 
said, properly and becomingly, in these anxious days 
of the republic, about a saving Americanism. No one 
better typified it than William McKinley. And he 
lived and preached and practised it, first as the cure 
for national disaster, and later for the guaranty of 
the greater good fortunes of the American people. His 
Americanism wrought the restoration in times of 
peace, and the very same Americanism revealed our 
unselfishness in Vi^ar. More, he proved the republic's 
readiness for every becoming burden for humanity's 
sake, in war's aftermath. 

Likewise, much has been said in the last three years 
about making war for humanity's sake. It is fitting to 
say on this occasion, in this memorial edifice, that 
America's first war for humanity's sake was com- 
manded by President William McKinley. Indeed, no 
one will dispute it : the first recorded war for human- 
ity's sake in all the world was when he unsheathed the 
sword in behalf of suffering and oppressed humanity 
in Cuba in 1898. And when it was won — quickly and 
magnificently won — he gave to th*^ world the first 

125 



126 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

example of national unselfishness and the first Amer- 
ican proof of loftier aims than territorial aggrandize- 
ment. 

I thought then that Cuba rightfully ought to have a 
place under the American flag. I still believe that the 
American spirit, backed by the security of American 
protection, has lighted the way to notable Cuban prog- 
ress. But McKinley had the clearer vision and saw 
the value of the world's understanding and Cuba's con- 
fidence in our national unselfishness. He restored the 
flag which had been hauled down in Hawaii, then 
furled a triumphant flag in Cuba, in high honor, to 
proclaim the banner of kept faith and national right- 
eousness to all the world. 

PIONEER OF EXPANSION 

In the story of the eventful year so recently brought 
to a close more has been said about lofty ideals and 
the assumed burdens of civilization than in all history 
before, but I like to recall that William McKinley 
was a pioneer who blazed the trail to the realm of en- 
nobled nations. He wrought our first expansion, he 
was its first official sponsor, and the party now in 
power, seeking all the entanglements which the fathers 
warned against, then proclaimed it imperialism. Mr. 
Bryan paramounted it eloquently, without influencing 
the popular or electoral vote, and sixteen years later, 
while Europe was torn with stupendous conflict, we 
were still so concerned about our own safety that 
President Wilson and a sympathetic majority in both 
houses of Congress sought to cast the Philippines 
^drift That was before supergovemment vMS 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 127 

dreamed of, that was before the contemplated merger 
of this republic in a supreme government of the world. 
No matter how the future fates may revolve, no 
matter how the premature grants of self-government 
may impair the good that was previously wrought, no 
matter how the logic of theory when practically ap- 
plied may end the glory of our flag in the Orient, we 
must credit the first helpfulness of this republic to a 
struggling people in distant lands to the sympathy and 
courage of William McKinley, and to American spon- 
sorship in the Philippines will be accredited one of the 
splendid pages of modern history. 

AMERICAN NATIONALIST 

I do not venture to apply too intimately the views he 
held or the lessons he taught to the mighty problems 
incident to our foreign relations of to-day. But my 
acquaintance was sufficient and my recollections are 
clear enough to be very sure that, in spite of his sym- 
pathy and generosity, he would be an American na- 
tionalist. His very soul was consecrated to the up- 
building and safeguarding of this republic. He wanted 
the superb and supreme America. He wished a patri- 
otic and a prosperous people. In all his public life his 
first concern was for these United States. 

He fought with the sons of the North to preserve 
union and nationality. Not for a material advantage, 
but to preserve the inheritance of the fathers and hold 
sacred the great Constitution on which the republic is 
founded. It was a strange fate, armed defender that 
he was, that he should be the first of all our presidents 
really to understand the South, and make it understand 



128 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

him; and then, in sympathy and understanding, he 
healed the old wounds of war and won the new con- 
cord of union so vital to our greater development. In 
the greatness of his soul and with the tact that charac- 
terized his public life, William McKinley began the 
most essential of all preparedness for national defense 
by restoring the confidence in union twenty years be- 
fore a world war put us to the supreme test. 

I am very sure that if William McKinley were alive 
to-day and charged with the trusted leadership we so 
gladly accorded him, he would be deeply sympathetic 
with the troubled world ; he would be keen to be help- 
ful to anxious peoples, but his deeper concern would 
be for our own welfare ; and in his capacity to bring 
people together he would have all in authority work- 
ing to that common end. 

A PARTISAN REPUBLICAN 

He was notably a partisan, a partisan Republican. 
He was the most representative Republican of his day. 
He believed in popular government through the agency 
of political parties, and believed in his party as the 
agency of greatest good to the American people. He 
was considerate, tolerant, courteous, but ever a par- 
tisan Republican. He did not believe his party had a 
monopoly on all that was good or patriotic, but he did 
believe it capable of best serving our common country, 
and its policies best suited to promote our common 
good fortune. His was an outstanding personality, 
lovable and admirable, but his strength was that of a 
party spokesman, and his great decisions came of Re- 
publican counsel. 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 129 

Whether it was the solution of a pressing problem 
at home, whether it was maintained honor and fully 
met obligations in our foreign relations, whether it 
was the continued elevation of the standards of Amer- 
ican life and the continued advancement of all ouf 
people, William McKinley was ever found committed 
to a sane and workable plan. It is not unbecoming to 
say that when anarchy struck him down and Theodora 
Roosevelt took up his burdens, he instantly announced 
he would continue the policies of his illustrious prede- 
cessor, and won the confidence and affection of Amer- 
ica in doing so. It dims the glory of neither to re^ 
tall it. They differed in type, of ttimes in methods, bui 
accomplished greatly because they voiced the dominanfj 
party in the republic. 

COOPERATED WITH CONGRESS 

No one could imagine William McKinley belittling 
Congress, or berating a "pygmy-minded Senate," be- 
cause that would have been unlike him. He had 
served in Congress, respected it as a coordinate branch 
of the government and worked with it — ^not in oppo- 
sition to it, not in domination over it. The success of 
his legislative and executive career had its foundation 
in his ability to understand and to be understood, and 
in understanding commit all the forces of government 
to seek the desired achievement. 

It is a faddish practise, sometimes an assumed su- 
periority, to cry out against political parties, and pro- 
claim the super-man who is free from party shackles. 
It is more a fraud than it is a reformation. If the 
super-man is available, he is still a partisan — a per- 



130 EEDEDICATING AMERICA 

sonal partisan if not political. In spite of the tardy- 
call to Republicans for a patriotic service for war, de- 
layed until the supreme emergency broke down the 
barriers, when the perils of inefficiency and inactivity 
aroused the country, the present administration has 
been as partisan as Jackson's, and the super-man be- 
came very human after contact with mortals in the 
councils at Paris, and a brush with a Senate which 
has resumed its constitutional functions. It would 
have been better to have cooperated and coordinated 
with Congress than to have disappointed America and 
broken the heart of the v^rorld with superlative ob- 
stinacy. 

POLITICAL PARTIES ESSENTIAL 

Perhaps it is old-fashioned, maybe it seems to be re- 
actionary, but I voice a deliberate conviction that the 
abandonment of government through political parties 
means the same instability for us which characterizes 
many Central American and South American states, 
or it means an autocracy or dictatorship which spells 
the end of our boasted republic. No one will deny 
abuses and disappointments in our established polit- 
ical system, but it made us what we are, and all the 
world has yet to match the record of American de- 
velopment and accomplishment. We had better cor- 
rect the abuses than to risk the abandonment of the 
system. 

We approached autocracy during the war. Con- 
gress submerged itself, and surrendered many of its 
functions. I am not complaining. It seemed neces- 
sary, because of our gigantic task of national defense. 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 131 

and the supreme emergency called for a supreme com- 
mand. I do not think William McKinley would have: 
asked it or accepted it, but practical humanity deals 
with situations as they have to be met. We escaped 
with only a temporary perversion, but the inclination 
now to forsake party sponsorship is only another form 
of opposition to constitutional government, more to 
be feared than those who preach destruction by force. 
To be sure, strong men are needed, but we need 
stronger parties back of them. You can't have stable 
government at the hands of a political party or a po- 
litical leadership which will barter proven principles 
for temporary success, or yield to the intimidation of 
any group threatening to assert its strength at the 
polls. Parties must be held as the agencies for the 
expressed conscience of the majority, and they must 
prevail or fail as they merit it. In popular govern- 
ment they are the agencies of education in matters po- 
litical. 

RESTORED PROSPERITY IN 1896 

An incident from the career of William McKinley 
affords a striking illustration. In 1896 the nation was 
in deep distress. The industrial disaster was wide- 
spread. It seems like a breath of changed air to recall 
now that our national grief was low prices. The farm- 
ers in Kansas burned corn for fuel, because it didn't 
pay to haul it to market. A dime looked as big as the 
moon, full-orbed, and a dollar was ample for a boasted 
balance in the bank. I can recall the wide-spread an- 
guish over the downward trend. The eminent Ne- 
braskan preached his famous cure-all in the free coin- 
age of silver. McKinley had another remedy, though 



132 REDEDICATINQ AMERICA 

personally he thought kindly of the double standard 
of coinage as a palliative to help reduce the patient's 
pain. Like the Republican that he was, like every Re- 
publican ought to be, he surrendered his personal views 
to the judgment of the party majority, and we turned 
to the education of the American voter. In August 
the country was ready for the wrong medicine, in No- 
vember it voted for the real cure, and there was re- 
corded a victory for the conviction of the Republican 
party and the intelligence of the American people^ 
And there was instant restoration. 

/ 

APOSTLE OF PROTECTIVE TARIFF 

Conditions change, new problems arise, new policiesi 
are necessary. I had rather trust the majority in any 
party, even the Democratic party, than rely on any 
outstanding personality in any party, super-man ox^ 
Otherwise. This decision by the majority is the un-* 
"derlying theory of representative popular government 
and makes our government sanely responsive to de^ 
liberate and dependable public opinion. If there is 
failure of our party to-day to meet the fullest expecta- 
tions of the American people, it is due in the main to 
the fact that we have so-called Republicans in our rank? 
land some of them in authority who seek to make th^ 
party policy, and failing in that, assume a superiority 
to party judgment. Such a course not only endangers 
party success at the polls, but destroys party ef- 
fectiveness in official performance. I commend inde- 
pendence and fearlessness of thought, but I invite the 
party devotion of McKinley as the highest guaranty 
of kept pledges and helpful accomplishment. 



WILLIAM McKINLEY ' 133 

Certain fundamentals always abide. The supremacy 
of government is one. The inspiration in nationality 
is another. The necessity of successful business is 
still another. Perhaps no public man in all our Ameri- 
tan development clung to that belief more tenaciously 
than William McKinley. It made him the apostle of 
the protective tariff. Men sneer at it nowadays, as 
though we had outgrown the coddling period, and are 
ready to match our wits with the world. We tried 
it in 1914, and sneers turned to sadness then, until 
Europe's tragedy cured our psychological grief. Let 
it be called narrow, provincial, selfish, contrary to all 
theory, whatever you like, in the industries coddled 
under protection we were independent, and in these 
unprotected and undeveloped the war found us help- 
less, until American genius turned to production imder 
war's necessity, and war's barriers of tragic protection. 
We know now the value of American self-dependence, 
and I speak for one who believes it sane Americanism 
now to safeguard the industries developed in war to 
add to our eminence and independence in peace, and 
to hold all American industry as of first concern and 
of first importance in guaranteeing the good fortunes 
pf the American people. 

It is utterly wrong to assume we have reached the 
heights of American development. There is an inter- 
esting analogy between pioneering in settlement and 
pioneering in developing industry. Under the westward 
march of the star of empire, the stalwart men who 
were bent on achievement took advantage of produc- 
tive resources, and built temporarily and speeded to 
production amid waste, because production was neces- 



134 REDEDICATING AMERICA ^ 

sary to subsistence and essential to permanence. One 
may fairly trace the developing stage across the con- 
tinent, with improvement and permanency superseding 
the hurried things of the hopeful beginning. It is a 
fair criticism of American industry that our first con- 
cern was quantity. I want to hail the day when we can 
do more than boast America as the greatest producer, 
I want our country the best producer in all the world. 

HIS LEADERSHIP IS INSPIRATION 

In some things we do excel. I remember a very 
great pride, during a European visit some years ago, 
to see American shoes exhibited in the show windows 
of the great cities as the "best in the world." Prob- 
ably we shall never excel in all production ; that would 
be the attainment of the miraculous, but I want to live 
to see the day when an American buyer asks for the 
best he will not be shown something imported. It 
is a desirable attainment for a greater reason than 
pride of country. It must be the inspiration of the 
American worker. There isn't much impelling a work- 
man in mere quantity production, in the mere grind 
for wage, but there is soul in doing a thing best. If 
one thing is needed more than another in the ranks 
of industry, it is pride in production and the spirit 
of attainment. 

In the McKinley policy there is every possibility 
and every encouragement. We have the higher stand- 
ards of living, and mean to maintain them. World 
wages haven't been leveled, and never will be until 
Old-World standards are raised to ours. 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 135 



MEMORY GIVES CONFIDENCE 

We shall never know the pre-war level of wage 
again, never the old-time proportions of wages and 
profits. I have been engaged in business in a modest 
way for thirty-five years and have never known a re- 
duction of wages. The tendency is ever higher, and 
ought to be. Nothing avails, however, if living cost 
is kept apace with the mounting wage. Thrift will 
help. More production and less extravagance will 
help. A sober thought of the morrow will aid still 
more. 

Business must and will yield more of its profits to 
those participating in their production, but business 
must be given its meed of just consideration. It can't 
sustain a government which is drunken in expenditure 
and keeps step to the Bolshevist anthem at the same 
time, and still perform its functions in health and 
sanity. There is a finer conscience in business in 
America to-day than has ever been revealed, in spite 
of the continued profiteering amid a saturnalia of ex- 
penditure, and we are sure to get right because the 
heart of America is right. 

I like to look forward with the confidence and hope 
of him whose memory we honor to-night. I know 
how he believed in the republic, how sure he was of 
the deliberate good sense of the American people. I 
know what his admonition would be — "Americans, 
front face, march on; let us make this republic the 
consummation of freedom and freedom's hopes and 
aspirations I" 



CHAPTER VIII 

George Washington 

"Address Delivered February 22, ipi8, at Washington's 

Birthday Celebration before the Sons and 

Daughters of the Revolution, at 

Washington, D. C. 



Mr. President, Madam President, Your Excel- 
lencies, Sons and Daughters of the Revolution, 
Ladies and Gentlemen, My Countrymen — I have 
been sensing the atmosphere of this patriotic occasion 
and the significance of this celebration. 

It is good to meet and drink at the fountains of 
wisdom inherited from the founding fathers of the 
repubHc. It is a fitting time for retrospection and in- 
trospection when we face a problem to-day even greater 
than the miracle they wrought. The comparison does 
not belittle their accomplishment. Nothing in all his- 
tory surpasses their achievement. The miracle was 
not the victory for independence. The stupendous 
thing was the successful establishment of the republic. 
There they were, spent and bleeding, in the very chaos 
of newly found freedom; there they were, with ideas 
conflicting, interests varied, jealousies threatening, 
and selfishness impelling; there they were, without 
baving visualized nationality. They had contended 

136 



.GEORGE WASHINGTON 137 

only for liberty, and when it was obtained they found 
2, nation to be the necessary means of its preservation. 

FOUNDERS DIVINELY INSPIRED 

With commanding patriotism and lofty statesman- 
ship, with heroic sacrifice and deep-penetrating fore- 
sight, they founded what we had come to believe the 
first seemingly dependable popular government on the 
face of the earth. I can believe they were divinely 
inspired. In the reverent retrospection I can believe 
that destiny impelled. Surely there was the guiding 
Jiand of divinity itself, conscious of sublime purpose. 

They not only wrought union and concord out of 
division and discord, but they established a represent- 
ative democracy, and for the first time in the history 
of the world wrote civil liberty into the fundamental 
law. On this civil liberty is builded the temple of 
human liberty, and through this representative govern- 
ment we Americans have wrought to the astonishment 
of the world. More, on the unfailing foundation of 
civil liberty they established orderly government, the 
most precious possession of all pivilizatiQji, and m^dQ 
justice its highest purpose. 

DEVELOPED AMERICAN SOUL 

Mark you, they were not reforming the world. They 
had dearly bought the freedom of a new people ; they 
reared new standards of liberty; they consecrated 
themselves to equal rights, then sought to establish 
the highest guaranty of them all. They had the vision 
to realize that no dependable government could be 
founded on ephemeral popular opinion. They knew 



138 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

that thinking, intelligent, deliberate, public opinion 
in due time would write any statute that justice in- 
spired. They knew that no pure democracy, with 
political power measured by physical might, ever had 
endured; that neither the autocrat with usurped or 
granted power, nor the mass in impassioned committal 
could maintain liberty and justice or bestow their 
limitless blessings. So they fashioned their triumphs, 
their hopes, their aspirations, and their convictions 
into the Constitution of the representative republic; 
they made justice the crowning figure on the surpassing 
temple, and stationed beckoning opportunity at the 
door — equal opportunity, let me say — and bade the 
world to come and be welcome ; and the world came — 
the down-trodden and the oppressed, the adventurous 
and ambitious — and they drank freely of the waters 
of our political life, and stood erect and achieved, each 
according to his merits or his industry, his talents or 
his genius. Generous in their rejoicing, the fathers 
neglected to establish the altars of consecration at 
the threshold. Eager to develop our measureless re- 
sources, anxious to have humanity come and partake 
freely of New- World liberty, they asked no dedication 
at the portals. They developed an American soul in 
their own sacrifices for liberty, but neglected to de- 
mand soul consecration before participation on the 
part of those who came to share their triumphs. 

We have come to realize the oversight now. We 
have come to find our boasted popular government 
put to the crucial test in defending its national rights. 
We met with no such problem in the Civil War. That 
was a destined conflict between Americans of the two 



GEORGE WASHINGTON 139 

ScHools of political thought, which was the final test 
in maintaining nationality. There was like passion for 
country on either side of that great struggle, but the 
dross in the misdirected passion for disunion was 
burned away in the crucible of fire and blood, and the 
pure gold turned into shining stars in dear Old Glory 
again. We settled rights to nationality among our- 
selves. We are fighting to-day for the unalterable 
rights which are inherent in nationality, without which 
no self-respecting nation could hope to survive, and 
for which any nation refusing to fight does not de- 
serve to survive. 

DUTY TO PRESERVE REPUBLIC 

We have the duty to preserve the inherited covenant 
of the fathers ; we have the obligation to hand on to 
succeeding generations the very republic which we in- 
herited. If this generation will not sacrifice and suffer 
in this crisis of the world, the republic is doomed. 
If this fortunate people can not prove popular govern- 
ment capable of defense in a war for national rights, 
popular government fails. If the impudent assumption 
of world domination is not thwarted by the entente 
allies and this people, then civilization itself is de- 
feated. Never since the world began has any nation 
been able to dominate the world. A mighty, righteous 
people may influence and help mankind, and I have 
wished that noble task for this republic, but domina- 
tion is for God alone, and His agency is the universal 
brotherhood of man. 

There is one compensation in the very beginning. 
We are finding ourselves. From this day henceforth 



140 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

w€ are l6 he an American people in fact a^ Well kS 
name. Consecration to America is the deliberate and 
unalterable decree. The dedicating altars are erected 
and are free as liberty itself. Now and hereafter the 
individual, no matter who he is or whence he comes, 
who proclaims himself an American and fattens his 
existence on American opportunity, must be an Ameri- 
can in his heart and soul. More, the American of 
to-day, to-morrow, and so long as the republic endures 
knd triumphs, must be schooled to the duties of citizen- 
ship which go with the privileges and advantages 
thereof, and men and women of America are to find 
what they can do for orderly government instead of 
seeking what it can do for them. 

Advice br Washington 

Solemnly, my countrymen, this is an epoch in humait 
affairs. The world is in upheaval. There is more 
than war and its measureless cost. Civilization is in a 
fluid state. All existent forms of government are being 
tested, and the very fundamentals of human achieve- 
ment are in question. In this hour of reverent mem- 
ory for the beloved father of our country, in this whole- 
some retrospection of the miracle wrought by the 
founders, in the hurried contemplation of the marvel- 
ous achievements of our people to whom they gave 
an immortal beginning, let us strive to appreciate their 
wisdom and our good fortune and commit ourselves 
anew to the essential preservation. 

I wonder what the great Washington would utter 
in warning, in his passionate love of the republic and 
his deep concern about future welfare, if he could 



GEORGE WASHINGTON 141 

know the drift of to-day? In his undying farewell 
address his repeated anxiety was concerning jealousies 
and heart-burnings which spring from distrust and 
factional misrepresentations — "they tend to rend alien 
to each other those who ought to be bound together 
by fraternal affection." 

And he warned us that "respect for authority, com- 
pliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures 
are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of 
true liberty." "Liberty itself will find in such a^ 
government, with powers properly distributed and ad- 
justed, its surest guardian. It is, indeed, little less 
than a name where the government is too feeble to 
withstand the enterprises of faction . . . and to 
maintain all in the secure and tranquil enjoyment 
of rights and property." 

Alluding to parties more comparable to factions ia 
our citizenship of the present day he warned against 
**the spirit having its root in the strongest passions 
of the human mind. It exists in all governments, 
more or less stifled, controlled or repressed, but in 
those of popular form it is seen in its greatest rankness, 
^nd is truly their worst enemy.'' 

FACTIONALISM DECRIED 

In t>ur mighty development we have added lo the 
perils of which Washington warned. The danger has 
not been in party association, but in party appeal or 
surrender to faction. There has been no partisan 
politics in our war preparation. On the contrary, par- 
tisan lines have been effaced to close up the ranks Iri 
patriptic devotion. But factions have grown more 



142 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

menacing and hold their factional designs more neces-t 
sary than patriotic consecration. 

It is characteristic of popular government, and its 
weakness, that there is more appeal to popularity than, 
concern for the common weal. Too many men in 
public life are more concerned about ballots than the 
bulwarks of free institutions. Our growth, our diver- 
sification, our nation-wide communication, our profit- 
bearing selfishness — these have filled the land with 
organized factions, not geographical, as Washington 
so much feared, but commercial, industrial, agri- 
cultural and professional, each seeking to promote 
the interests of its own, not without justification at 
times, but often a menace in exacting privilege or 
favor through the utterance of political threats. If 
popular government is to survive it must grant exact 
justice to all men and fear none. If law is to be 
respected and government remain supreme, legislation 
must be for all the people, not for the few of vast 
fortune or its influences, or the few of commanding 
activity and their assumptions, or the many who may 
assert political power in accordance with numerical 
strength. The republic is of all the people, equal in 
their claims to civil liberty and the grant of oppor- 
tunity, aye, and its righteous rewards. The anxieties 
of world conflict and the inevitable alterations must 
not blind us to the tasks of preservation. 

If the war is to make of us, or of any national 
votary of modified democracy, an impotent people, 
paralyzed by revolutionary reform, it is not worth the 
winning. If this world tumult is to leave wrecked 
hopes like that of chaotic Russia to prove that autoc-. 



GEORGE WASHINGTON 143 

racy and unintelligent democracy have a common 
infamy, then civilization must have its purification in a 
penitence of failure and wrecked hopes and unspeak- 
able sacrifices, until God in His mercy and wisdom 
restores sanity to mankind and admonishes men to 
achievement over the proven paths of human progress. 
No thinking man can ignore the changes which war 
is working. But surely there is a righteous mean 
between the extremes of the expiring adherents of 
autocracy and the intoxicated radicals of deceived and 
demoralized democracy. Let's prove the republic the 
highest agency of humanity's just aspirations. 

TO PRESERVE NATIONAL RIGHTS 

My countrymen, I am not crying out in a wilderness 
of pessimism, I am uttering a warning that comes of 
love for the republic. Let us go on, no matter what be- 
tides, to the dependable establishment of our national 
rights and the safety of our peoples ; yes, and the sus- 
tained hands of justice among the peoples of the 
earth. We are no longer able to hold aloof, and the 
world must be made safe to live in. Let us prove our 
unity — the common purpose and the unalterable pur- 
pose of all Americans to do that — and then let us dedi- 
cate ourselves in unity and concord and the same un- 
alterable resolution to the preservation of the inherited 
republic. I could utter a prayer for an American 
benediction, to bestow on us the wisdom, the devotion, 
the faith, and the willingness to sacrifice, which 
strengthened the fathers in their mighty tasks. I wish 
we might dwell in their simplicity and frugality and 
the freedom from envy which attended. I wish I 



144 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

might end the extravagance of government and of indi- 
vidual life which adds to unrest and rends our strength. 
It is our besetting sin. We need as much sober 
thought about what we spend as we need agitation 
about what we earn in every walk of life. No people 
shod in $18 shoes is equipped for the conquering march 
pf civilization. 

We do not proclaim ours the perfect republic, nof 
ytl the ideal popular government, but we do maintain 
it is the best and the freest that the world has ever 
known, and under it mankind has advanced and 
Achieved as under none other since civilization dawned, 
fend in good conscience and consecrated citizenship 
and abiding faith and high hope we mean, with God's 
good guidance, to go on to the fulfillment of the 
highest American destiny. 



CHAPTER IX 

Abraham LiNCOLKf 

'Address hefore Lincoln Club, Portland, Maind 
February 13, 1920 

Destiny made Lincoln the agency of the fulfillmen!, 
held the inherited covenant inviolate and gave him to 
the ages. No words can magnify or worship glorify. 

We are recalling him to-night to bring ourselves to 
a fuller understanding and a keener appreciation of 
the legacy of his martyrdom. I like to recall him as 
a Republican. In the majesty of his memory, men of 
all parties quote him, but no American ever lived 
who believed more in his party, or who had stronger 
convictions of the necessity of political parties as the 
agencies of popular government. He believed our 
government to rest in public opinion, but looked to 
his party as the vehicle for expressing that opinion. 
He did not value the ephemeral opinions of a day, 
nor the clamor of haste; he clung to the convictions 
which could appeal to the judgment of posterity. He 
was neither opportunist nor advocate of expediency. 
He was mighty in conviction and clung to the Consti- 
tution and the supremacy of law as sole assurance of 
maintained civilization and national life. 

145 



146 REDEDICATING AMERICA ^ 



DUTY OF CITIZENSHIP 

In his day there was unrevealed the modern prob- 
lem of the foreign born. In his day the emigrant 
voyaged to citizenship, and came to participate, and 
was promptly received into the accepted responsibil- 
ities of citizenship. If he lived to-day, with his great 
heart athrob for the future stability of the republic, 
I can fancy him crying out that there are no privileges 
of American citizenship except for those who assume 
its duties, and there is no room anywhere in free 
America except for those who subscribe to orderly 
government under the law. 

Lincoln the nationalist could never have been an 
internationalist. Through four years of an imperiled 
republic he maintained the foreign relations inspired 
by the fathers. No one questions his towering great- 
ness, no one challenges that he was astep with highest 
human progress, yet he revered Washington and held 
his teachings to be sacredly important. He would 
dim no light of experience to fix his course by a light 
he knew not of. Perhaps we never shall know all of 
the tact and all the wisdom employed in preserving 
uninvolved relations when the world found it difficult 
to adjust commercial selfishness to seeming neutrality. 
How practical he was to arrange for the impressive 
visit of the Russian fleet in an hour of growing peril, 
and end the obligation promptly by paying the ex-^ 
penses in the added price paid for the purchase of 
Alaska! He believed in the people, but he cloaked 
that transaction because its revealment would have 
added to war's complications. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 147 



EXPONENT OF NATIONALITY 

I do not believe Lincoln would have this expanded 
and enriched republic of more than a hundred millions 
hold aloof from the world, or avoid a single duty in 
furthering world civilization. His heart would have 
rejoiced at our part in halting the military autocracy 
of Germany in its ruthless pursuit of world domina- 
tion. I think he would have speeded the righteous 
resistance of the abridgment of our national rights. 
I am sure the distressed condition of the Old World 
to-day would touch his great heart, as it has all 
humanity's, but I am very certain he would never sur- 
render the nationality for which he sacrificed and 
fought to any supergovernment of the world, no 
matter what its title or its purposes might be. He 
would cling to the American conscience as the guiding 
light of a confident republic. 

He was a believer in opportunity as the highest of- 
fering of free America. It was his belief that "every 
American should have a fair start and an unfettered 
chance in the race for life." That was the doctrine 
of Jefferson in his proclaimed equal rights, that was 
the policy of Hamilton who demanded a government 
strong enough to guarantee them. That was the 
"square deal" of Theodore Roosevelt. That was the 
Golden Rule of the "Man of Nazareth." 

AMERICA AFFORDS EQUAL OPPORTUNITY 

It is America's supreme offering to-day — equal op- 
portunity to all men and reward as they merit it. Civil 
liberty protects them in righteous acquirement. Any- 



148 REDEDICATING AMERICA ^ 

thing less is an abridgment of liberty. Men must 
achieve according to their talents, according to the 
metal that is in them, else there is no human progress. 
The adopted standards of mediocrity would halt all 
human progress. 

Class legislation is likewise a perversion of liberty 
and class domination puts an end to liberty's justice. 
Let us hold our America the republic that Lincoln 
preserved for posterity, freedom under the Constitu- 
tion, security under the law, and stability under the 
law's unchallenged supremacy. 



CHAPTER X 

General Grant's Republicanism 

^Address at Grant Dinner, Middlesex Club, Boston, 
Massachusetts, igi6 

Gentlemen of the Middlesex Club — When Gen- 
eral Grant was at Spottsylvania, facing obstacles and 
discouragements which would have halted any other 
commander of Union forces, he took note of his ap- 
palling losses of general officers and men in the ranks 
observed anew his surroundings, saw the horrifying 
conflicts yet to come, assured himself of certainty of 
ultimate triumph, then penned his letter to General 
Halleck, which proclaimed the Union ultimately re- 
stored. It was typical of the simplicity and the unal- 
terable determination of this rugged, silent leader to 
say that "I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes 
all summer." It did take all summer, but he knew he 
was right, and pushed on and on, irresistibly on until 
disunion at Bull Run was turned to reunion at Appo- 
mattox. There is no liner instance of conscientious 
conviction and unswerving purpose in all the making 
of American history, and I would have the great po- 
litical party to which General Grant belonged, and with 
which he served, gather inspiration and assurance 
from his memory and example. 

We were everlastingly right in the principles for 
149 



150 ' REDEDICATING^ AMERICA' 

whicH we contended when disunion rended our useful- 
ness in 1912. We believed in the fundamental prin- 
ciples then for which we stand to-day, and we purpose 
to hold the charter of Republicanism inviolate, just 
as Grant fought to preserve the ark of the American 
political covenant. We stand to-day, as in the party's 
beginning, committed to the fundamental principle of 
representative democracy and the American policy of 
tariff protection, and we mean to fight it out on these 
lines "if it takes all summer," this year and next. 
Millions of volunteer enlistments are awaiting the 
call, and everywhere, north, south, east and west, is 
manifest eagerness to see the Republican reunion, con- 
fident that Republican victory means the country's 
restoration. 

No sign above the political horizon was ever so con- 
spicuous — the Republican party is coming back in a 
sweeping national victory. Mark you, there is no doubt 
about the ultimate result. The Republican party is 
coming back because it is once more proved to be 
right, because the country needs Republican policies 
and attending good fortune, because Republican ca- 
pacity to construct and administer to the highest ad- 
vantage of the American people has been magnified 
anew by the chastening which always attends a Demo- 
cratic administration. 

POLITICAL PRINCIPLES IMPORTANT 

Political whims and popular personalities will come 
and go, but a political principle stands everlastingly 
true; sometimes it is obscured by the passing storm, 
but it stands like a beacon unchanging, to guide the 



GRANT'S REPUBLICANISM 151 

pilots oi nations. It is consistent devotion to principle 
which holds the Republican party as the hope and 
promise of the American people to-day. Thoughtful 
observers believed they saw the end in 1912. But 
when the atmosphere was cleared of the conflicts of 
personalities and the resort to expediencies and sur- 
render to exigencies and appeals to prejudices, there 
loomed the monuments of Republican constructive- 
ness, there stood the foundations on which to rebuild. 
The Republican party endures because of its unal- 
terable faith in our representative form of govern- 
ment, as conceived by the inspired fathers, upon whose 
foundation we have builded to surpassing national 
glory. We believe in representative democracy as 
adopted in the Federal Constitution, and proclaim it to 
be the highest and best form and plan of a people's 
rule ever fashioned by mankind for the commonweal. 
We believe that upon this principle we have made 
orderly progress and unequaled advancement, until 
the record of that progress is the greatest heritage of 
American citizenship. We believe sincerely in the rule 
of the people, not through unthinkingly broadened re- 
sponsibilities, but through the conscience-driven, rea- 
soning exercise of a citizenship made sovereign from 
the beginning. 

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY IS BASIS 

Equal rights and equal opportunity were proclaimed 
at the very start — Liberty's first contributions to the 
federal foundation — they have been sacredly main- 
tained, and in their exercise our people have wrought 
to the astonishment of all the nations of civilization. 



152 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

Though Jefferson was their conspicuous advocate, he 
was no more influential in their estabHshment than 
FrankHn, who insisted on safeguarding by constitu- 
tional provision, and Hamilton, who demanded a na- 
tionality ample to guarantee them. Thus was the Re- 
publican party consecrated to these indestructible 
principles by its Federalist forebears, and reconse- 
crated by that martyred hero who saved the nation — i 
Abraham Lincoln. He said we are for "a fair start 
and an unfettered chance in the race of life," and the 
Republican party holds to the same doctrine, unalter- 
ably to-day. Turn specifically to the birth of the Re- 
publican party, and the record recites its committal to 
the cause of human rights at the altar of its christ- 
ening; it has been consistent and sincere in every re- 
iteration; points to performance to prove the wisdom 
of its promises ; may always cite its pledges kept as an 
index to party conscience, and finds the reflex of its 
unwavering progression in the American standard of 
living and the matchless story of American accom- 
plishment. We opened to equal rights and equal op- 
portunities the avenues of reward. Our party exalted 
human rights by providing conditions for higher at- 
tainment. We could not revise human nature nor 
abolish greed ; we could not stamp out envy nor elimi- 
nate selfishness, nor eradicate jealousy; we could not 
establish the equality of capacity or reward. But we 
did apply the best of thought and honest intent to the 
solutions of problems that attend exceptional growth, 
and mean to go on, deliberately, orderly, conscien- 
tiously, yielding not to prejudice nor passion, but 
strengthening the weak in the supremacy of law, al- 



GRANT'S REPUBLICANISM 153 

ways avoiding destruction, where possible, seeking to 
cure and preserve, always advancing to the ideal over 
safe and proven paths. 

Looking back now, when the reflective vision Is un- 
impaired, I venture to say that the country and our 
political parties need a new baptism of truth. We 
were aware of mistaken attitudes and unapproved 
practises in our party in 1912, not without extenuating 
circumstances, however, but we were too wrought up 
by conflict to cure in needed deliberation. We had 
keener vision for national perils than for party weak- 
ness. We endangered our party system by the abuse 
of it, and we needed awakening to the truth to effect 
a cure. Inspired by the country's call for a Republi- 
can return, we shall be strongly equipped in a new 
consecration to everlasting truth, and let the Demo- 
cratic party revel in expediency and new paramounts 
which invariably lead to disappointment. There was 
the double lure of expediency in 1912, and the con- 
fusion of double opposition. The combination put the 
Democratic party in power, and routed the Republican 
forces, but the ultimate result is the awakening of the 
country to a realization of the indissoluble relation be- 
tween Republican policies and a people's good fortune. 

REPUBLICANISM MEANS PROSPERITY 

It seems characteristic of our American life that: we 
must have periodical Democratic paralysis to bring us 
to appreciation of the healthful glow of Republican 
activity. I am thinking of 1892 and 1896. After that 
visitation of Democratic disaster and depression, 
wrought in the name of cheapness and the freedom of 



s 



J54 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

buying in the markets of the world, there came a 
fevered frenzy to banish a symptom rather than re- 
move a cause. The people believed we needed more 
and cheaper money. Mr. Bryan's cross of gold loomed 
up like a flaming comet and harbinger of destruction. 
But the Republican party clung to the truth, it pro- 
claimed the cause and offered a cure, and an under- 
standing people went to the ballot-box and took Mr. 
Bryan's crown of thorns and transformed it into a 
wreath of bloom, redolent of the perfume of abundant 
prosperity, and placed it on the brow of that greatest 
of all apostles of protection, the revered and trusted 
William McKinley. 

The situation is analogous to-day, and the Repub- 
lican party will cling to a great, saving truth. If we 
have one distinguishing characteristic above all others, 
ours is the party of protection. Under its banner our 
party has achieved its most notable triumphs and 
wrought the greatest good fortune to the American 
people. Any surrender or apologetic modification will 
dim our most glorious identity. Not all the country 
wanted the abandonment of a protective tariff. Owing 
to the mutterings of selfishness, which can not be 
escaped, no matter how loftily we aim, part of the 
people thought we ought to "sharpen our wits in com- 
petition with the world," but it was a minority which 
voted for the new freedom which soon became an old 
and unhappy idleness. But Democracy delivered and 
a nation was distressed. 

But Democracy did not deliver the expected lower- 
ing of prices, because sixteen years of Republican 



GRANT'S REPUBLICANISM 155 

good fortune had established a higher standard of 
living, and with it a higher capacity to live, and the 
fulness of Democratic destruction was averted by the 
cataclysm of European war, which saved us from the 
competition against which the Democratic party would 
not protect us. Last year, when the situation was 
new and little understood, President Wilson shifted 
the responsibility for retarded activities from psycho- 
logical depression to the effects of war. The actual 
truth challenges contradiction — the European war has 
given the only impetus that has marked production in 
the United States since the passage of the Underwood 
tariff, and it is said without rejoicing. Our people 
do not want to prosper at the bloody sacrifice of the 
brave men In Europe, locked in the conflict of horrify- 
ing war ; our aspirations are in the triumphs of peace. 
We want the good fortunes that come of American 
markets for Americans, with our higher wages, higher 
standards and larger capacity to buy. We have proven 
again and again the beneficence of protection, and our 
people, again awakened to appreciation, want the pol- 
icy restored. Nobody pretends that any Republican 
tariff law has been perfect, but none has ever been 
destructive. I choose a tariff law like Methodist liber- 
ality in baptism — sprinkling at least, pouring if one 
believes that way, immersion if necessary, and re- 
demption under one of the three. The party which be- 
lieves in protection must look to its perfection. Our 
party was progressing in that direction when it was 
distracted by the contest over candidates which ended 
in our undoing. It is not to be said that Republican 



J56 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

protection has made for unvarying good fortune, buf 
it is political history that Democratic revision invari- 
ably makes for depression and holds it uninterrupted 
until we apply Republican relief. 

NEED PROTECTIVE POLICIES 

Henceforth we must look above and beyond the un- 
ceasing and selfish wrangle about schedules, and com- 
prehend from the broader view. Under Republican 
protective policies we have the larger and a general 
prosperity ; we have doubled or trebled wage scale and 
abundance of employment ; we have the higher stand- 
ard of living and the larger capacity to buy. It is not 
what the consumer pays, it is the consumer's ability 
to buy that counts. Democracy's error lies in thinking 
Only of the consumer, but a Republican knows it is the 
producer that counts. One must produce before he 
can consume, and American eminence is the reflex of 
a well-paid, fully-employed nation of producers. If 
protection and its alleged robbery are leading to op- 
pression, as Democracy asserts, let some knowing 
Democrat tell us why the incoming tide of immigration 
always floods our shores when Republican good for- 
tune obtains. It is so true that opponents have urged 
that we protect our products, but do not protect the 
laborer. Every experience refutes the charge. When 
the tide of Republican good fortune is at the flood we 
need every newcomer to perform our tasks; common 
labor would be left undone without them. They do 
not lower the wage, they ascend to the American 
heights. And they do not come to seek a new ex- 
istence in oppression or industrial slavery, but pour 



GRANT'S REPUBLICANISM 157 

into this New- World haven of liberty and hope to find 
equal rights, the reward of industry and merit and 
opportunity, and mount the plane of exalted American 
citizenship. 

I am not blind to the admonition that the Repub- 
lican party must take advanced ground to win popular 
favor. It may be noted, too, that those most insistently 
urging this, are declaring for the effacement of the 
men who have been conspicuous in the past. Let me 
warn you, fellow Republicans, the way to victory and 
the country's restoration is not in recrimination, but 
reconsecration. To efface the old guard, so-called, 
really a term of honor rather than opprobrium, which 
saved us from utter dissolution and gave us a party 
around which to rally, would be like effacing the vet- 
erans who turned the tide of rebellion at Gettysburg 
in '63. Nay, more, it would be like discrediting Grant's 
irresistible army which moved unfalteringly on, despite 
the discouraging losses, from the Wilderness to Appo- 
mattox and melted their swords and bayonets in the 
fires of conflict to rivet anew the ties of a saved and 
henceforth and forever indissoluble nation. At the 
same time let it be understood that there need be 
neither foreswearing nor apology on the part of thos^ 
who enlisted in the Progressive cause of 1912. I can 
utter a cordial and sincere welcome to the reenlist- 
ment of any or all. The country is calling, the cause 
is a people's need, and the glory of things to be will 
make trivial the bitterness that came of things which 
could not be. Let us turn from the unhappy wreck of 
1912 and look to relieving the country of the mis- 
fortune which attended. The party has proved its 



158 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

capacity to survive; let us vi^ork together to make it 
the instrumentality of highest usefulness under popu- 
lar government through political parties. 

SANE PROGRESSIVISM NEEDED 

It is well, however, to ponder the tendency to break 
away from some of our old-fashioned moorings. Ours 
is intended to be a representative government, and 
has grown to gratifying eminence after nearly a cen- 
tury and a half of trials and storms and passing pas- 
sions and prejudice. It was never intended to be ex- 
cessively paternal nor socialistically fraternal. Yet 
there is a drift to both, and there is only a step be- 
tween. Plunder and greed on the one hand, and ap- 
peal to prejudice and hate on the other are swelling the 
throngs of Socialism, which will turn our genius and 
talent and industry into paralyzed efficiency. Surely 
there is a path of political righteousness aloof from 
these threatening dangers. With conscience awakened, 
let us make it more sensitive; with men heeding, let 
us weave new strength into the moral fiber of indi- 
vidual American manhood ; with public interest awak- 
ened, let us make honesty the first requisite of men 
and political parties, and apply it as the surest cure 
of all social and political and economic ills. Mean- 
while, remembering that subsistence is the essential 
foundation on which man must stand to reach for the 
ideal, let us think of the upkeep as well as the uplift, 
and assure our millions the subsistence from which 
they may aspire. 

We wish our party to be sanely, safely, genuinely 
progressive. We \^ant its reflective of the best thought 



GRANT'S REPUBLICANISM 159 

of our most helpful activities. But we must remember 
that material progress and human rights are not in- 
compatible, but are inseparable, and any policy which 
hinders legitimate business halts the onward proces- 
sion. We have suffered from that tendency because 
there has been a disposition to make political declara- 
tions more designed to enlist votes than advance the 
people. Some times there is stronger inclination to 
exploit than to exalt. We have made stronger appeal 
to expectation than to realization. It is not enough, 
to be sure, to live in the past, but it must stir the Re- 
publican heart to realize that our surpassing American 
progress has come largely through Republican policies, 
and chiefly under Republican administration. It is no 
disparagement of the best interests of any political 
party to say the Republican party reflects the best 
conscience of the best civilization the world has ever 
witnessed. Our party represents that conscience be- 
cause we are political sponsors for things accom- 
plished. We have not dreamed, we have realized. 
We have not obstructed, we have constructed. We 
have not pretended, we have performed. We have not 
halted or faltered, we have attained and sustained. 
We have pride in things done — the highest reward of 
worthy endeavor, and we have the faith that sustains 
every national hope of the future. For the things for 
which we have not been, because conditions were not 
ready, for the things which ought to be, we may strive 
together, making the conscience and the judgment of 
the majority the will of the party. Any other plan 
spells the failure of government of the people through 
political parties. 



160 REDEDICATING AMERICA 



RENEWED CONSECRATION 

The things most needed are not new ideas, but new 
isincerity and a new consecration to truth already ut- 
tered. With McKinley, Roosevelt and Taft our party 
declared for a restored merchant marine, and were 
hindered not alone by the Democratic party, but by 
Republicans recreant to the party's pledges. They 
were deterred by the clamor about special privilege 
^nd government favoritism, things which never halted 
the triumphant fathers. They provided subsidies and 
subventions and discriminating tonnage taxes and 
preferential tariffs on cargoes shipped in American 
bottoms, and they whitened the seas with American 
sails and acquainted the world with the American flag. 
The preservation of their policies would have main- 
tained our prestige as carriers by seas, but we aban- 
doned our upbuilding and it heralded our undoing. 
Finally war brought us to realization. Except in a 
limited sense, war paralyzed the carriers of our com- 
petitors, and blocked their shipping lines which we 
builded for them, out of our freights, to aid them in 
defeating our commercial expansion. Then when the 
unsupplied markets of the world turned to us, and 
trade beckoned as never before, and opportunity 
awaited as opportunity rarely does await, we found 
ourselves unable to respond, and missed the oppor- 
tunity for the miracle of expansion. Democracy awoke 
to the error of its persistent opposition, declined to 
confess its mistaken attitude and turned to substitute 
federal ownership for the subsidy it condemned. 

We build the Panama Canal at fortv millions out- 



GRANT'S REPUBLICANISM 161 

lay, and say to world shipping : "Here is an American 
gift to further your fortunes." I think the time has 
come to do something for American shipping, to add 
to our conquest of world markets, while enhancing 
our prosperity at home. This policy has been the wish 
of Republican majorities, but we failed to write the 
wish of the majority into party and national law. 
But we can do it now, and we will; a restored and 
triumphant American merchant marine shall be the 
first contribution of returned Republicanism to greater 
national glory. 

HOME PRODUCTION URGED 

We have heard something lately of a slogan — 
"Made in the U. S. A." No other political party can 
so becomingly adopt it. We like "made in the U. S. 
A.," and mean to protect the making and the makers. 
And we mean to be consistent by buying in the U. S. 
A., and not only commend the policy to American 
citizens, but demand the practise by the American 
government. It was lacking in patriotism for the 
government to buy abroad the million-dollar cranes 
for the completed Panama Canal, because European 
toilers worked for less, when our own workmen needed 
the employment. It shows a lack of mutuality of in- 
terest to have American railroads go to Canada for 
thousands of tons of steel rails, and reveals the weak- 
ness of our system which gives our markets to Cana- 
dians when they have none of their own and we need 
ours most at home. "Made in the U. S. A." is the 
making of the U. S. A., and the Republican party 
would make it a glad reality, an assurance of accom- 



162 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

plishment at home and a herald of American superi- 
ority abroad. There is Httle use to make if we do not 
buy. And httle use to make if we do not sell, and we 
need our own ocean carriers to deliver. 

While honoring Grant to-night, let us recall his ad- 
vice on this subject, written in the deliberation of his 
reflections when he penned his memoirs — ^thirty years 
ago. The great commander wrote : 

"Now scarcely twenty years after the war, we seem 
to have forgotten the lessons it taught, and we are 
going on as if in the greatest security, without the 
power to resist invasion. . . . We should have a 
good navy, and our seacoast defenses should be put 
in the finest possible condition. . . . Money ex- 
pended in a fine navy not only adds to our security and 
tends to prevent war, but is a material aid to our 
commerce." 

The truth is more apparent to-day. Naval prepared- 
ness for defense is not preparation for invasion. Safe- 
guarding tranquillity is not eagerness for conquest. 
The United States has no such purpose. Our terri- 
tory is ample. Texas alone has as many square miles 
and as many fertile acres as the German empire, 
which holds the Allies of Europe at bay. We are so 
large, so seemingly measureless, so physically beyond 
comparison, that I think, sometimes. Democratic 
failure is due to lack of realization of our greatness, 
and the requisites of greatness in solving its own 
problem. Where European coast lines count hundreds, 
ours measure thousands, and we require for "safety 
first," not only the best of coast defenses, but we ought 
to have the first and best navy in the world. It will 
guard our commerce, our sea, and guarantee our tran- 



' GRANT^S REPUBLICANISM " 163 

quilllty at home. It will cheer Missouri as it comforts 
Massachusetts, and make the American voice for peace 
more an argument and less an appeal. 

THE AWAKENED CONSCIENCE 

Mr. Toastmaster, no Republican, no American can 
be blind to the agitation and the strife for reformation 
which marked our political activity during the past 
half dozen years. If in the contest between radicalism 
and conservatism the pendulum was far-swung to the 
former, let us hold to all the good which was wrought 
and guard against the excessive backward swing. 

In that retrospection which makes for inspiration, 
there grows the conviction that Republican progress, 
written in half a century of Republican accomplish- 
ment, seems more like the miracle of a national destiny 
than the story of a political party and its tasks in state- 
craft. But the truth abides, incomparable and incontro- 
vertible. We have not only made a nation, rough-hewn 
and popularly governed, the marvel of development 
among great nations; we have contributed to the up- 
lift, emphasized human rights and elevated the stand- 
ard of living; we have not only become leaders in 
finance and industry ; we have not only become equals 
in education and rivals in art, but we are the inspira- 
tion and example of other republics, and ought to be, 
could be, influencing the idealization of the government 
of the earth. Thus runs the epitome of Republican 
accomplishment. It justifies our pride in the past, 
explains the nation-wide turning to the party for the 
country's restoration, and gives every assurance of 
glorious triumphs in the future. 



CHAPTER XI 

yoTE ON Declaration of War with Germany 

'Address in the Senate of the United States, 
Wednesday, April 4, ipi/ 

The Senate, as in Committee of the Whole, had under con- 
sideration the joint resolution (S. J. Res. 1) declaring that a 
state of war exists between the Imperial German Government 
and the Government and the people of the United States, and 
making provision to prosecute the same. 

Mr. President — I am conscious of the impatience 
of the Senate to reach a vote on the pending joint reso- 
lution, and I do not find myself impelled to enter into 
any extended discussion of the matter pending; but I 
do realize the gravity of the moment, and I want to say 
for myself at least a few things that will help to avoid 
a wrong impression coming from the action to be 
taken by this body. 

I want those whom I am seeking to represent in this 
body to understand that I am not voting for war in re- 
sponse to the alleged hysteria of a subsidized or Eng- 
lish-owned press. I want to take this opportunity of 
resenting the charge that the press of the United States 
is either owned or subsidized by any foreign power. 
I do not hesitate to say that I think the American press 
is the best safeguard we have to the American spirit, 
and the best advocate we have of our American lib- 
erties. 

164 



yOTE ON WAR WITH GERMANY 165 

I want it known also that I am not voting for war 
in response to the campaign of the munition makers, 
for there has been none. 

NOT FIGHTING IN NAME OF DEMOCRACY 

I want especially to say, Mr. President, that I am 
not voting for war in the name of democracy. I want 
to emphasize that fact for a moment, because much has 
been said upon that subject on this floor. It is my 
deliberate judgment that it is none of our business 
what type of government any nation on this earth may 
choose to have ; and one can not be entirely just unless 
he makes the admission in this trying hour that the 
German people evidently are pretty well satisfied with 
their government, because I could not ask a better 
thing for this popular government of the United States 
of America than the same loyal devotion on the part 
of every American that the German gives to his 
government. 

I am not unmindful. Senators, that the great Julius 
Csesar fought the battles of the Roman republic, and 
his assassins saw him bequeath an empire to Augustus. 
I am not unmindful that the great Bonaparte fought 
his battles in the name of the first French republic, and 
his ambition left an empire that faded at St. Helena. 
It does not matter so much. Senators, what the form 
of government may be if the people existing under 
that government are content therewith. More depends 
on the human agency that administers the government ; 
and it is my deliberate judgment to-night that it is up 
to us to demonstrate the permanency of a republic 
before we enter upon a world-wide war to establish 



166 ' REDEDICATING AMERICA ' 

democracy. We may well leave that to the other 
nations concerned. 

TO MAINTAIN AMERICAN RIGHTS 

I want It known to the people of my state and to 
the nation that I am voting for war to-night for the 
maintenance of just American rights, which is the 
first essential to the preservation of the soul of this 
republic. Why, Senators, perhaps it has been an ob- 
session with me, but in watching the trend of events 
since the outbreak of the European war and the en- 
deavor to influence popular sentiment in this republic 
I reached a stage where I doubted if we had that 
unanimity of sentiment which is necessary for the 
preservation of this free government. We had reached 
a stage where seemingly we were without a soul. 
Somehow or other we had deadened the fires under 
the American melting pot, and it looked as though we 
were a divided people. On the floor of this 
Senate, where above all else we ought to preach Ameri- 
can unity and the maintenance of American rights, I 
have heard doctrines preached which indicated divi- 
sions and selfish interests, which suggested that these 
United States of America, instead of going on to the 
fulfillment of the splendid destiny that the fathers 
must have had in mind, were becoming a mere colloca- 
tion of states rather preferring to live in ease and 
comfort and selfish attainments than to know the spirit 
that becomes this boasted, popular government 



VOTE ON WAR WITH GERMANY 167 



TO PRESERVE AMERICA 

And SO, Mr. President, to-night, in the grave situ- 
ation that I full well realize, with the understanding 
of every responsibility that goes with the vote, I vote 
for this joint resolution to make war — not a war 
thrust upon us, if I could choose the language of the 
resolution, but a war declared in response to affronts ; 
a war that will at least put a soul into our American 
life ; a war not for the cause of the Allies of Europe ; a 
war not for France, beautiful as the sentiment may 
be in reviving at least our gratitude to the French 
people; not precisely a war for civilization, worthy 
and inspiring as that would be ; but a war that speaks 
for the majesty of a people popularly governed, who 
finally are brought to the crucial test where they are 
resolved to get together and wage a conflict for the 
maintenance of their rights and the preservation of 
the covenant inherited from the fathers. 

Why, Mr. President, not so very long ago, in the 
mail which comes to me as it does to every member 
of this body, a constituent wrote me asking: "Why 
seek to preserve American rights? There is no dis- 
tinctly American nationality," said he. "We are a 
mixture or a blend or an aggregation of all the peoples 
of the world, and we have been surrendering our 
rights, notably in Mexico. Why insist upon them 
now?" I said to him, as I say to the Senate now: 
"The momentary suspension of American rights, or 
the temporary toleration of an attack on American 
rights, does not mean their surrender." I said to him 
further ; "If there is no one who is distinctly Ameri- 



168 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

can, then, in the name of the republic, it is time that 
we find one." I hope that out of this great tumult 
of the world, and our part therein, there will spring 
from Columbians loins the real American, beheving in 
popular government, and willing to suffer and sacrifice, 
if need be, to maintain the rights of that government 
and the people thereunder. I believe that this is the 
great essential to the perpetuity of the American re- 
public — the maintenance of rights in confidence, abso- 
lutely without selfish interest. 

GUARANTEE OF NATIONALITY 

We have given to the world a spectacle of a great 
nation that could make war without selfish intent. We 
unsheathed the sword some eighteen years ago, for the 
first time in the history of the world, in the name of 
humanity, and we gave proof to the world at that 
time of an unselfish nation. Now, whether it is fate 
or fortune or the travail of destiny, it has come to us 
to unsheathe the sword again, not alone for humanity's 
sake — though that splendid inspiration will be involved 
— but to unsheathe the sword against a great power in 
the maintenance of the rights of the republic, in that 
maintenance which will give to us a new guaranty of 
nationality. That is the great thing, and I want it 
known, Mr. President and Senators, that this is the 
impelling thought with me for one when I cast my 
vote. 

I have been told, and the senator from Wisconsin 
(Mr. LaFollette), who stood here to-day, gave us the 
warning that we were taking up a perilous cause. He 
made the argument that the nation which was willing 



VOTE ON WAR WITH GERMANY 169 

to follow the submarine warfare could probably assert 
itself against the combined powers of the globe. Mr. 
President, not since the world began, not since civili- 
zation wrote its first page in history, has it been given 
to any one nation to dominate the earth. World 
domination is not of man. That is of God, the Cre- 
ator. It has become the fortune of this republic to 
cry "halt!" to a maddened power casting aside the 
obligations of civilization and the limitations of that 
which we look upon as highest humanity. I know that 
the task will be undertaken by the American people 
not originally committed to the cause of war, but a 
people who will understand that when the Congress 
speaks after due deliberation, after the patience which 
this body and this government have exercised, the voice 
of the United States Congress is the voice of the nation, 
and one hundred millions of people will commit them- 
selves to the great cause of the maintenance of just 
American rights — a thing for which the nation can 
well afford to fight, and while fighting for it put a new 
soul into a race of American people who can enthusi- 
astically call themselves truly and spiritually and 
abidingly an American people. 



CHAPTER XII 

America in the War 

Address at the Ohio Republican State Convention, 
Columbus, Ohio, August 2y, ipi8 

Gentlemen of the Convention — The statement 
that "politics is adjourned" needs revision. Disloyalty 
and indifference are adjourned, and patriotism flames 
high above and beyond party lines for the winning of 
the war. The first and foremost thought of every real 
American is the armed triumph of America and her 
allies, with Germany brought to kneel at the altar of 
international pentinence. Minority hampering of the 
government in prosecuting the war has not been ad- 
journed, because there was none to adjourn. The few 
obstructionists, long since shamed into obscurity, bore 
no party credentials, but were disavowed by the party 
to which they previously adhered. No party worthy 
of trust in peace or war invites or accepts the fellow- 
ship of any who is not one hundred per cent. American 
in the hour of the republic's peril. 

And "politics is adjourned" never can be true of a 
nation popularly governed through the instrumentality 
of political parties. These parties are inseparable from 
every vital step in national life. Abolish them and 

170 



AMERICA IN THE WAR 171 

personal government becomes the substitute, and abso- 
lute, and violates every conception of representative 
popular government. 

PARTIS ANISM FORGOTTEN 

The strife for partisan advantage amid the anxieties 
of war, partisan opposition designed to delay and 
hinder — ^these have been discountenanced by the Re- 
publican minority since the day the Congress com- 
mitted the country to defend national rights and the 
safety of civilization. We submerged partisan lines 
for the concord of the republic, and in Congress and 
out the present minority party has given to the presi- 
dent the most cordial and whole-hearted and abiding 
support ever given to any federal executive by a mi- 
nority party since the republic began. To be Americans 
first rivets our devotion as Republicans. We must save 
the republic which we aim to exalt. 

It is the simple truth, not spoken in disparagement 
of any one, the patriotic conscience of the republic, 
wounded and suffering through affront and outrage 
before we declared war, the war declaration and the 
consecration of the human and material energies of 
republic to its winning, have been more cordially and 
effectively sustained by the Republican minority than 
by the dominant party in control of the government. 

REPUBLICANS SUPPORTED WAR 

It is not said to boast. It was a patriotic duty, read- 
ily and gladly performed. It hastened the spiritual 
preparedness of our people. It speeded all America 
to unalterable committal and undivided support. It 



172 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

developed a national soul aflame. It gave notice to 
the world, and Germany in particular, that this great 
free people, in spite of partisan lines and sectional 
differences and varied interests and conflicting opin- 
ions, even with sedition taught and tolerated, we could 
be one people, heart and soul, to give to our last 
dollar and our last heart-beat to maintain national 
rights and the freedom of the world. 

There will be, there can be no limitations to our un- 
alterable committal. Patient, tolerable, forbearing, 
more than forgiving, we humbled our pride and held 
aloof when an earlier entry would have answered the 
call of a righteous self-respect, but we are committed 
to the task now, and nothing will satisfy but an un- 
conditional triumph. This conscience-awakened gen- 
eration will not turn slacker and pass on to another 
the conflict between might and frightfulness on the 
one hand and humanity and justice on the other. 

I do not know how long it will last. I do not know 
what the cost in lives and treasure will be. I can not 
estimate the measure of sacrifice and suffering and 
sorrow. I do know the unalterableness of our con- 
science-driven committal. 

NEW BIRTH OF NATIONAL SOUL 

This is an epoch in the world. We have witnessed 
the new birth of the national soul. We are all Ameri- 
can from this time on. No prefixes, no apologies, no 
limitations, simply unalloyed, unconditional, unalter- 
able, all-American. 

When Congress had before it the question of arming 
our merchant shipping for self-defense, an Ohio citi- 



AMERICA IN THE WAR 173 

zen of foreign birth wrote me in protest against the 
proposed arming, admonishing me not to be too con- 
cerned about American rights, because, said he, "there 
is no distinctly American citizen," In my amazement 
I made reply and said : "If it be true, as you urge, that 
there is to-day no distinctly American citizen, then in 
God's name, out of this turmoil of the world, out of 
this travail of civilization, let us have a real and dis- 
tinct American spring from Columbia's loins, to leave 
a race of real Americans hereafter." And from this 
day on he who chooses existence on American soil and 
profits on beckoning American opportunity, and wears 
the garb of American citizenship, must be American in 
his heart and soul. No republic can endure half loyal, 
half disloyal. The protection and advantages of citi- 
zenship demand the duties and obligations of that 
citizenship. We are to be right at home and righteous 
in world relationship to make the republic worthy its 
best aspirations and prove exemplar to the world that 
orderly, popular government is a diviner thing than 
divinity of kings. 

I recognize with utter frankness the difficulty and 
embarrassment in formulating a minority party policy 
in a time so fraught with anxiety, when the winning of 
the war transcends all else. Under a party government 
ours is not the direct responsibility, but no party 
sponsorship marks patriotic devotion. Country first! 
Win the war ! Speed a peace with overwhelming vic- 
tory ! Conscious of a loyal minority's part, we pledge 
our all. A proclaiming Republican who is not heart 
and soul for American and aUied triumph can have no 
voice in our councils to-day and can not appraise the 



.174 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

pricelessness of our achievement sufficiently to have 
a helpful say in the aftermath to come. 

REPUBLICANS URGE CONCORD 

Our most trusted leaders in public life, those best 
equipped to know and speak the aspirations of party 
and nation, have put concord of American spirit and 
unity of endeavor far above and beyond partisan ends, 
party policy and personal convictions. There is re- 
pressed outcry about unending instances of discour- 
aging incompetency, distressing errors, and shocking 
incapacity, but it has been better to press remedial at- 
tention than to rend our concord and mar the con- 
fidence of a trusting people. 

Much of disappointment, much of delay, much of 
shocking wastefulness would come of unpreparedness, 
where a people dwelling in fancied security are sud- 
denly drawn unexpectedly and unwillingly into the sur- 
passing conflict of all civilization. It is little use now 
to grieve over the costly inactivity during the precious 
days when we saw the world-war flames mounting 
higher and higher and men in authority knew — aye, 
they knew — we were sure to be involved. It is little 
use now to recite the regrettable story of our first 
wasted year in the war. It is better to fix our eager 
gaze on the million and a half irresistible American 
fighting men, whom we speeded to Europe far in ad- 
vance of early intentions, because imperiled freedom 
and civilization stirred us to the republic's best en- 
deavor. Let us satisfy our hunger for achievement in 
the indisputable evidence that the armed sons of the 
republic have turned the ti4e of war. 



AMERICA IN THE WAR 175 

The Republican party, in the position of opposition, 
after the glorious years of constructive responsibility 
doesn't mean to turn to nagging faultfinding in Con- 
gress or on the stump while the flag is imperiled. We 
will await our return to power and correct the errors 
of a party unfitted by teaching and unsuited because 
of its dominant elements for the best advancement of 
our great republic. 

INVESTIGATIONS PROVE HELPFUli 

We have supported the cause, we have striven to 
speed this mighty people to the performance of a real 
man's part in the engrossing struggle. Not a few 
thought — and some in high places proclaimed — that the 
several investigations in Congress were designed to 
embarrass or discredit the work of the administration. 
Nothing was further from the truth. Congress, feeling 
the impelling conscience of the country, was seeking 
to produce, not hinder. That there was minority 
insistence need not be surprising in our era of drift 
on the majority's part toward congressional abdica- 
tion. But the purpose was patriotic and helpful beyond 
measure. These investigations turned failure into de- 
veloped might. I can speak of one instance with per- 
sonal knowledge. 

For thirty years the Republican party had been de- 
claring for and striving for a restored merchant marine. 
We wanted it for commercial eminence in peace and a 
military and naval auxiliary in war. We urged only 
few millions from the federal treasury to aid Ameri- 
can genius and industry to restore the prestige taken 
from us by a like policy. But the party now in power 



176 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

maintained its abiding opposition and the war found 
us without the shipping necessary to carry on war 
across the broad Atlantic. We hurriedly appropriated 
hundreds of millions, and yet more hundreds of mil- 
lions, to do what private enterprises would have ac- 
complished with a relative pittance of encouragement. 
But there was delay and dispute and well-grounded 
alarm, with Germany destroying the allied carriers and 
our own at sea. Finally, by calling the attention of 
Congress to the growing menace I unintentionally be- 
came sponsor for a resolution to investigate. Partisan 
intent was charged, but we did investigate, and we 
stirred to endeavor, and we corrected colossal blunders. 
My point is that we helped instead of hampered. 

RECONSTRUCTION AHEAD 

I think there is courage, practicability, lofty patriot- 
ism and highly unselfish partisanship to consecrate the 
minority party energies to the supreme task at hand. 
We will call for the big accounting when the fitting 
time comes, and such a time will come. 

We can not define the constructive and obstructive 
policies which will be pressing on the morrow of 
peace. We shall only claim the conscience and capac- 
ity, already proven, to work out the best solution. We 
are free from committal to the fundamental changes 
made in the name of war. 

There are to come the tremendous problems of recon- 
struction and restoration. To make popular govern- 
ment capable of self-defense we have swung far in 
granting excess power to the executive. It was seem- 
ingly necessary, and most of the astounding grants are 



AMERICA IN THE WAR " 177 

for the war period alone. They would be intolerable 
in peace — would be a perversion of every ideal of 
representative popular government. We have a right to 
assume the automatic resumption of the normal state, 
but power is seldom surrendered with the same will- 
ingness with which it is granted in the hour of great 
emergency. But I think the conscience and conviction 
of the republic will demand the restored inheritances 
of the founding fathers. I know the Republican party 
will stand for only the modifications which are decided 
upon in the deliberate reflection of peace, not the en- 
forced and destroying changes wrought in the exigen- 
cies and anxieties of war. 

Some powers are exercised without specific grant, 
contrary to all we boast in the rule of democracy. The 
leadership of the president is never to be disputed in 
the disposition of patriotic endeavor against a foreign 
foe, but the interference of the president in domestic 
affairs far removed from executive authority reveals 
a tendency toward usurpation which we must and do 
oppose in our devotion to the cherished inheritance of 
political freedom. 

A political leader, proclaiming politics adjourned, 
poorly sustains the pronouncement when he tells any 
state, Republican or Democrat, whom to send to the 
Senate. Party leadership does justify partisan council, 
but executive sponsorship or presidential branding, 
whether it is the Okeh on an opulent Ford or the 
brand of disapproval on a Republican or Democrat 
who rejects the rubber-stamp service, savors more of 
autocracy than representative democracy. It was re- 
sented in Wisconsin and will be resented in Michigan, 



178 ' REDEDICATING AMERICA ' 

and patriotism will be exalted. Parties and peoples in 
the several states of the Union are still capable of 
choosing their spokesmen in Congress in peace or war, 
else we acknowledge the failure of the very institutions 
which we commend to the world. 

NOT THE president's WAR 

This isn't exclusively the president's war. See the 
campaign bulletin boards of 1916 for the disavowal. 
This isn't a party war, because the majority party in 
Congress was too divided to declare it and too divided 
to prosecute it. This is the war of the American peo- 
ple, answering an offended people's resolution to de- 
fend the nation's rights. The president is official 
leader and recognized commander-in-chief, and we 
mean to back him up to the limit of our energies and 
resources, but as leader of the Democratic party we 
challenge his unwarranted assumption of autocratic 
political authority. 

Democratic party politics hasn't been adjourned for 
one hour in the control of the government by the ad- 
ministration now in power. I do not presume to say 
our party would have been less vigilant in strengthen- 
ing the party hold on the reins of government. It is 
inopportune now to audit the account, and note the 
sacrifices of a nation's interests for partisan advantage, 
but peace will call for the revealing story. 

Nor can we survive the appeal to mass against class, 
nor surrender proven policies to organized might. 
Thoughtful students of human progress recognize the 
great changes war is working. There are changes 
economical, changes sociological, changes political. 



* AMERICA IN THE WAR 179 

The world must change in such a tumult. And we 
ought to advance, we must grow better, else all the 
sacrificed lives will be spent in vain. 

We are far adrift toward the socialized state. The 
seizure of the railroads did not proclaim it, because 
that action was an apparent necessity. The seizure of 
the communication lines was more revealing. Authority- 
was asked on the plea that it was needed for a possible 
emergency, and the intention to take them over was 
emphatically disclaimed. In two weeks after the grant 
of authority was passed, without an emergency arising, 
without a proclaimed necessity, the seizure was made. 
Another step taken ! Others will follow. No man can 
mark the halting place. War authority is almost limit- 
less, and while the sons of the republic are battling 
to make the world safe for democracy, the radicals at 
home are making the republic the realm of state social- 
ism. If it were only for the war there would be less 
concern. Any one who looks to complete restoration 
after peace comes again is blind to the speeding cur- 
rent in our national life. 

There are, indeed, tasks to come. We achieved under 
representative democracy, and we ought to preserve it. 
We boasted civil liberty, human liberty and religious 
liberty, the triune of American freedom, and we ought 
to hold them inviolate. We developed the republic to 
world eminence, literally to supreme eminence in this 
surpassing trial of civilization, through the absolute 
equality of opportunity to all men and unalterable law 
of regarding merit, but the socialized state will blight 
it all. 



180 REDEDICATING AMERICA 



INTERNATIONALISM DECRIED 

We gloried in nationality, now we are contemplating 
internationality. Modern conditions, eliminated dis- 
tances, banished aloofness — all put human kind in 
closer touch. Many of the new obligations we can not 
escape. We do not mean to shirk them. 

No one need to be surprised if old issues are given 
new life. I look to see favorite Republican policies 
take on renewed importance. Addressing Congress 
last winter the president declared for the removal of 
all barriers of trade. This is the tenet of the inter- 
national faith. The Socialists demand it. But it can 
not be now. America will never lower her standards, 
but they can not be maintained without trade barriers. 
Let the world advance to ours. 

The theory of banished barriers is beautiful, the 
practise is destroying. American labor will never con- 
sent. We must have protection to hold us what we are, 
and send us on to greater eminence. 

DEMOCRATIC EXTRAVAGANCE ATTACKED 

The theorists often modify their pet notions when 
challenged by unalterable conditions. The government 
is building the mightiest merchant fleet of the world, 
but the anti-subventionists now openly admit we can't 
operate it in open world competition, except through 
governmental assumption of the higher cost that goes 
with American standards of labor and wage. The 
treasury will pay the bill, but the people must supply 
the treasury. 

One hesitates to speak of taxation in this day of in- 



AMERICA IN THE WAR 181 

conceivable expenditure and saturnalia of extrava- 
gance. The grumbling is suppressed because the 
patriotic resolution of the country is steeled to sacrifice 
and outlay, and denial and burdens. There is ever 
waste in war, and attending abuses inseparable from 
war and war's destruction. Ours is the heavier be- 
cause we have paid for speed, and spent vainly in in- 
competence. The non-partisan report on this aircraft 
failure is proof enough. I will not yield to specify. 
An aggrieved and disappointed nation knows. The 
popular notion of the hour that it is good to dissipate 
the resources of the country will become an emphasized 
folly in the tedious days of liquidated debts when the 
fever of war has subsided. We ought to have accom- 
plished vastly more at half the cost, but cost is little 
reckoned now. The present majority will never limit it. 
Let none mistake the simple solemn truth; there is 
great work for any party ahead, a great work for the 
Republican party. There is no call to cast aside party 
organization, or diminish party endeavor. No party 
has had a monopoly on patriotism or loyalty since the 
republic began, else the republic had failed long ago. 
yVe have proven our devotion in every great test. We 
are best fitted to solve the problems to come, because 
the errors are not ours, and we are neither called to 
apologize nor defend. The presidency isn't at issue this 
year. President Wilson will see the war's end in that 
period allotted to him by the traditions of American 
politics, meanwhile we mean to support him cordially, 
whole-heartedly and patriotically as the republic's 
commander-in-chie f . 



CHAPTER XIII 

The Republican Party and America 

'Address before the Republican Rally at Memorial 

Hall, Columbus, Ohio, February 2^, ip20 

(Washington's Birthday) 

Fellow Republicans — It is good to touch elbows 
again, and breathe the spirit of confident Republican- 
ism. It is gratifying to feel a full fellowship in a great 
political party, which has left such an impress of help- 
fulness to the republic that all the United States of 
America are turning to the Republicans for the res- 
toration hoped for in every American heart. So strik- 
ing is this truth that there is a confident belief that the 
sectional lines which have heretofore marked the limits 
of Republican majorities are certain to be broken, and 
the solid South, Democratic for two generations, hence- 
forth will be no more than a political memory. 

Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia and Louisiana are 
encouraging Republican hopes, and Texas, if not so 
promising as the others, is demanding the reorganiza- 
tion of the Democratic party, with restored Jefferso- 
nianism, and while it is at it, progressive, ambitious, 
magnificent Texas may go the whole route to redemp- 
tion, and turn to confident Republicanism for the reali- 
zation of its higher aspirations. 

The explanation is not difficult. The South is in- 
182 



THE PARTY AND AMERICA 183 

tensely American. It has come to a full realization of 
the advantages of American nationality, and though 
its representatives in Congress largely acquiesced in 
the proposed surrender of nationality, as negotiated in 
the peace treaty, her people are in outspoken opposi- 
tion. More, the states of the South, during the world 
war, came Into the glow of fuller American activities, 
and understand the economics and agencies of their 
continuance, and wish for the things which were urged 
and supported in fifty years of notable Republican con- 
tribution to American progress. If the expectation of 
new political alignments in many states of the Union is 
too optimistic, I would still cherish the hope. In the 
new Americanism which is the supreme compensation 
for the sorrows and sacrifices which attended our part 
in the world war, we want no sectional lines, no North, 
no South, no East, no West. Let the imaginary lines of 
old prejudices be forgotten; let mountains divide and 
rivers separate; let conditions vary and methods 
change; these United States, with one pride, one con- 
fidence, one flag and only one, henceforth and forever 
constitute one common country. 

CIVILIZATION NEVER STANDS STILL 

War's frightful upheaval has done more than turn 
world civilization into a fluid state and leave us won- 
dering what the new crystallization is to be. It did 
more than threaten the world civilization, first with the 
domination of autocracy, then In the crash of autoc- 
racy it revealed the other extremes, and the eastern 
continent faces the menace of a destroying democracy. 
Civilization never stands still. It is decadent or pro- 



184 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

gressive. In Russia the trend is backward, to the 
primitive law of force. There is less of liberty in Rus- 
sia to-day than ever complained of under the czar. 

Many a European state is sorely menaced, through 
distorted visions which come of warfare and its ele- 
mental brutalities and unspeakable licenses. But here 
in America an overwhelming majority still thinks 
straight, and we mean to go on to higher and better 
things. 

War brought home to us a new appreciation and a 
new realization of the things which made us what we 
are, and a new understanding of the essentials of self- 
dependence and the securities of national defense. It 
gave us a new impression of the utter necessity of the 
unchallenged supremacy of the law. It reminded us of 
the existence of a Federal Constitution — through the 
tendency to get away from it. It warned us that fan- 
cied isolation and righteous intent and insistent neu- 
trality afford no guaranty against involvement. Aye, 
and it assured us of the power, the majesty, the un- 
conquerableness of a great, free people, patriotically 
aroused and conscientiously committed. 

WE WERE NEGLECTFUL 

It cautioned us, also, concerning a weakness in popu- 
lar government. Amid proclaimed neutrality and ut- 
tered wonder at what the war was about, and insisted 
"peace without victory," we were supine and neglect- 
ful about a possible defense while millions were sanc- 
tioning "He kept us out of war." And during every 
hour and every day of all that false proclamation the 
inner administration circles at Washington knew that 



JHE PARTY AND AMERICA 185 

our involvement was inevitable, and we wasted many 
precious months of preparation, which might have 
commanded peace, and spared us inestimable expendi- 
ture and thousands of sacrificed lives. I am not com- 
plaining about the campaign slogan in the false appeal, 
I am lamenting the neglect of the republic to win an 
election. Popular government will never be depend- 
ably secure until its political agencies and its spokes- 
men think more of the common weal than of results 
at the ballot-box. I choose the political party which 
had rather be right than be victorious, and want the 
Republican party so committed in this critical period in 
human progress. 

PARTIES GOVERNMENT AGENCIES 

Parties are the agencies through which representa- 
tive popular government is administered. The found- 
ing fathers so intended and the practise has given to 
us the most nearly dependable popular government the 
world has ever witnessed, and it made us what we are, 
no matter what the faddists say, about abandoning 
political parties. The same fathers gave us the par- 
ties of Hamilton and Jefferson, so opposed in prin- 
ciple and so firmly founded that, in spite of new con- 
ditions and the changing order, they run true to form 
in the present day. Hamilton's solid financial plans 
might help cure the threatening ills of unduly ex- 
panded currency, and his economic ideas gave us the 
industrial development which saved the allied nations 
in war and aided our own belated preparations on a 
gigantic scale which had much to do with the turned 
tide of world conflict. On the other hand Jefferson 



186 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

ever opposed a strong federal power and attending na- 
tionality, and his most eminent successor and his fol- 
lowers in the present day have sought insistently, 
almost obstinately, to rend our nationality and merge 
us as a compliant or suppliant state in a supergovern- 
ment of the world. 

DANGER MARK WAS NEAR 

I think I can assure you the plot has failed. If the 
people had voted in 1918 as the White House edict 
commanded, in the most astounding official document 
ever uttered, we might to-day be Democratic subjects 
of the autocratic council of nine, with the Old World 
passing on the obligations of this republic; but since 
the Senate has resumed its constitutional functions, so 
long surrendered in order to marshal all our forces for 
national defense, there will be no betrayal of American 
nationality. 

The war was not partisan, even though it had that 
aspect in the disappointing days of our earlier com- 
mittal. There was not a place for the inspiring Roose- 
velt, though he stood on the ramparts crying out for 
defended Americanism. It was my fortune to stand 
sponsor for an amendment to the army bill which 
would permit him to go with a division of volunteers 
while we were getting the machinery of universal 
service in operation, and France was calling for him 
and wondering that he did not come, yet his offer was 
ignored. In spite of the early contradictions the war 
was not partisan, it was consecrated patriotism, shared 
in by all parties believing in orderly government, and 
peace might and ought to have been patriotic and the 



[THE PARTY AND AMERICA 187 

treaty disposed of without partisan division. But the 
president insisted on making it partisan, personally if 
not politically partisan, and held a Senate with its 
"pygmy minds" — but with constitutional powers — in 
contempt. Essentially alone he negotiated the surren- 
der of American nationality, and still essentially alone, 
one in a hundred million, he blocks its final disposition. 

COUNTRY WANTS FORMAL PEACE 

Many of us, nearly all of us, are for early final ac- 
tion. We want formal peace. It could be brought 
about in a single day except for the president, who in- 
sists the Senate and the country must do his bidding. 
Europe calls with her assent, the allied nations have 
spoken approval, all America is eager for the ultimate 
decision, yet the president, and the president alone, 
blocks the way. If any one in America wants to make 
a campaign issue of such obstinacy, let it be so. The 
Republican party will welcome the responsibility of 
Americanizing the treaty and recording a preference 
for things American. 

If you would contrast party government and per- 
sonal government, contemplate threatened pocketing 
of the treaty if the Senate does not bow to the presi- 
dential will, or the threatened withdrawal of the treaty 
if the council of foreign powers doesn't revise the 
Italian and Jugo-Slavic boundaries to the Wilsonian 
committal — dictatorlally withdrawing the sacred cove- 
nant, which the Senate's failure to sanction was going 
to break the heart of the world ! 

It has not been a partisan conflict in the ordinary 
sense, it has been the measured test of constitutional 



188 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

authority, attended by many irritations and a lofty re- 
gard for duty. Since our party has been conspicuous 
in the defense of safeguarded America, let us rejoice 
as RepubHcans that we have played our big part in 
maintaining the soul of American nationaHty. 

We want this great, strong repubHc to play a big 
nation's part in contributing and counseling and par- 
ticipating in the promotion and preservation of peace, 
and advancement of humanity and furthering of world 
civilization. But I like the old-fashioned Americanism 
which arrogates to ourselves the keeping of the Amer- 
ican conscience in all our foreign relations, and pre- 
scribes our own duty to ourselves and the world. 

WHY MEDDLE IN EUROPE 

We love and commend justice everywhere on earth, 
but why meddle and mess things up in Europe, four 
thousand miles away, when there is plenty to attract 
our attention on our very own borders? Mexico af- 
fronts us, kidnaps our citizens and murders when we 
do not ransom, holds American property rights in con- 
tempt, and "watchful waiting" aggravates the trouble 
across the border and humbles our pride at home. I 
would rather make Mexico safe and set it aglow with 
the light of New- World righteousness than menace 
the health of the republic in Old- World contagion. 

But I started to speak of party sponsorship and have 
drifted far afield. Government with party sponsor- 
ship brings us closer to the Constitution, and saves us 
the instability that characterizes personal government. 
Our weakness in the republic to-day lies in personal in- 
sistence over and above party conviction. No man 



THE PARTY AND AMERICA 189 

ought to be greater than his party. Let the individual 
make his party great, let him stamp his leadership on 
party progress, but the party must still remain the 
voice of the majority. 

NEED JUDGMENT OF THE MANY 

No man, no official, no authority ever lived who 
could not profit in council and advice. Men really 
worth while ever welcome it. We are a hundred mil- 
lions, and the men with capacity and fitness for public 
service are not limited to the few who edge into the 
limelight in candidatorial array. We need the judg- 
ment of the thousands of representative men who 
think understandingly, and in the combined judgment 
of unselfishness we escape the dangers which come of 
political selfishness. I want the Republican platform to 
represent the convictions, the conscience, the aspira- 
tions of the thinking Republicans of America, let its 
utterances be the covenant of Republican faith and the 
chart for a Republican administration. Then we shall 
have no makeshift of expediency, no insincerity, no 
hopeless experiment, no false appeal for support. 
Above all else, let it be a covenant wrought in good 
conscience, and then pledge all who call themselves 
Republicans to its sincere support. 

For such failure to meet the people's expectations 
as our party must answer to-day, I answer an insuf- 
ficient party sponsorship. Nominally we control the 
Senate by two, but we number a few who profess Rer 
publican affiliation but hold themselves above party 
conviction. I cherish the hope of a cohesive and con- 
fident Republican majority in Congress, with a party 



190 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

committal, where majority rule abides, and then co- 
ordination and cooperation with Congress and the ex- 
ecutive which shall translate party promises into re- 
corded accomplishment. 

HAS NO PERSONAL ENDS 

I am not unmindful of current criticism that I have 
no specific platform. It is the truth. I have no per- 
sonal ends to serve in platform making. It is an easy 
matter to say what I think the party ought to stand 
for, and I should like a part in uttering the judgment 
of the party. 

We ought to resolve to cling everlastingly to Amer- 
ican nationality and hold unabridged every inheritance 
of constitutional American liberty. 

We ought to favor not only the perfected American- 
ization of the republic, but to hold it wholly and re- 
joicingly American hereafter. We ought to have it 
understood from this time on this is no mere colloca- 
tion of peoples calling themselves Americans, but one 
people, with one spirit, one soul, one allegiance, one 
language and one flag. 

We might well pledge ourselves never again to be so 
unmindful of our national defense. We ought to have 
an ample navy, as our first line of defense. We ought 
more than to keep apace — we ought to lead the world 
in the development of aviation and be stronger in the 
air than we are on the sea. We ought to have a stronger 
army than we have ever known in peace heretofore, 
and we ought to have all the young manhood of the re- 
public know the benefits of discipline and physical bet- 
terment that come of military training, but it ought to 



THE PARTY AND AMERICA 191 

be voluntary, not compulsory; supported by the gov- 
ernment in camp, in the national guard, in schools and 
colleges. It ought to be made so popular and so help- 
ful that young America would seek it as a privilege 
rather than accept it as a duty of compulsory require- 
ment. 

SEEK STABLE WAYS OF PEACE 

We ought to resolve to do every consistent thing to 
get away from abnormal conditions of war, and seek 
the stable ways of peace. We ought to declare for un- 
shackling both of business and citizenship, and restore 
our boasted freedom under the Constitution. Every 
extraordinary war statute ought to be promptly re- 
pealed. 

We ought to declare an end to bureaucracy, crowned 
with autocracy, all excessively commissioned, and turn 
again to government by law and free activities of a 
law-abiding people. 

We ought to declare the Republican party unalter- 
ably opposed to government ownership and national- 
ization of industry or any other compromise with in- 
sistent socialism which proposes to fix our goal within 
the limits of mediocrity. We have seen the experi- 
ment made in the name of war, not for war efficiency 
or to meet a war emergency, but demanded in an hour 
of peril when our people were thinking only of dangers 
from without, and unheeding of menaces developing 
within. The failure has been convincing. 

We ought to about face on war's extravagant expen- 
diture, and get to thinking in millions again, instead of 
incomprehensible billions. War-time burdens in time 
of peace show scant consideration of uncomplaining 



192 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

patriotism, and high cost of government is the first 
cause of the high cost of Hving about which we all so 
earnestly complain. We must become sane in expen- 
diture to recover our poise, and government itself must 
be an example of economy to its citizenship and hark 
back to thrift as the security of good fortune. 

FOR AMERICAN SQUARE DEAL 

We must pause to reflect that the American square 
deal, which is the essence of all just government, must 
apply to all American citizenship alike and is the due 
of righteous business without which we do not pros- 
per, is the right of the American farmer without 
whom we can not subsist, is our pledge to the American 
workman whose good fortune is essential to both tran- 
quillity and continued advance. We must consult them 
all, and be dominated by none. I do not think a man's 
business success makes him ineligible to advise or par- 
ticipate in government. I do not believe the farmer's 
uncomplaining patriotism in war will be fittingly re- 
warded until he comes into closer and more influential 
council in seeking the highest good fortune of all the 
American people, and must himself fully share the 
fruits of our achievement. 

For the American wage-earner the problem is more 
pressing, because there is the attempted development 
of class consciousness, which is always a peril to pop- 
ular government. We ought to have no class antago- 
nism in this republic, because the fundamental law con- 
templates every man precisely alike and grants equal 
rights to all. Special privilege belongs to no man, no 
body of men, whether their might is wealth or knowl- 



THE PARTY AND AMERICA 193 

edge or in weight of numbers. And influence isn't 
government, but a perversion of it. 
. The surest index to advancing civiHzation is the ele- 
vated scale of life and higher rewards of the men who 
toil. War has left new levels, and we shall never re- 
turn to the old. It is just as certain as anything can 
be that a new proportion has come in the division of 
the profits of production, and labor's share will never 
grow less. I do not know that the war scale of wages 
will abide, but wages in themselves do not constitute 
the true measure of compensation. If wages are dou- 
bled and the cost of living is more than doubled, labor 
has lost rather than gained. The real test of compen- 
sation is what remains between the sale of a day's 
work and the cost in making it, which is the balance of 
trade underlying all acquirement. 

DREAMER NEEDS AWAKENING 

The dreamer who expects an old-time cost of living 
and present-day wages is in need of waking. But in- 
creased efficiency, added pride in production and ear- 
nest endeavor for a better order will contribute toward 
reduction, and still the restlessness with which the 
world is threatened. 

The world needs production. It needs work, more 
work, and still more work. Production will stabilize 
the world's exchanges. Production will challenge the 
lie about freedom in seizure by force and government 
founded on physical might. Seizure is the destruction 
of civil liberty, and ends all justice and destroys old 
order. 

America has no problem transcending in importance 



194 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

the establishment of agencies to secure ottr industrial 
peace. No man can ever be made to work against his 
will in free America, and the student of modern de- 
velopments in industry who thinks to destroy unionism 
and collective bargaining little understands the new or- 
der. Unionism has liberated, it must not enslave. Col- 
lective strength has wrought great progress, but it must 
not assume dictation. The thoughtful wage-earners of 
America would not have it so. They want a square 
deal, and it is their due. They ask justice, no one ought 
proffer less. But government fails if it does not find 
the agency for ministering that justice, and it must; 
and it fails worse if it does not prohibit the conspiracy 
which may halt any public service or in any way im- 
peril the health and lives of the people through par- 
alyzed production and transportation of life's necessi- 
ties. The problem can not be ignored. It demands the 
conscience and the courage and the intelligence of par- 
ties and men and the government which they constitute. 
Let the square deal illumine the way — a square deal 
that gives a thought to all the people and the common 
good as well as those who dwell in class consciousness. 

MUST REITERATE WHOLESOME POLICIES 

The Republican party may reiterate a score of poli- 
cies which have stood the test of developing years, and 
are still orthodox and wholesome. That is because 
they are convictions, not paramountings to meet mo- 
mentary conditions. 

Let some one jog a dependable memory and recall 
a paramount issue of the Democratic party that ever 
grew to the ripe age of ten years. It can't be done. I 



THE PARTY AND AMERICA" 195 

did think anti-imperialism and anti-expansion of two 
decades ago were going to have a comeback, but De- 
mocracy forgot its apprehensions in its visions of Co- 
lumbia presiding at the world's tea party, held in Ge- 
neva. 

The menace of a treasury surplus (blessed mem- 
ory!) and the crime of demonetization have gone jaz- 
zing down the corridors of time, to give place to pro- 
posed government ownership in the heroic hour of its 
proven failure. 

Republicans may renew every expression ever made 
relating to an American merchant marine, and events 
will approve and aspirations will acclaim. War found 
us almost helpless, because of our dependence on Eu- 
rope for shipping, and the submarine threat to destroy 
all shipping. We turned to building in great haste and 
appalling extravagance. 

We know now that we can not operate profitably un- 
der the inefficiency of government ownership and con- 
trol. Any big and real development must come of 
the initiative and inspiration of private enterprise. I 
would sell the vessels, rapidly as we can find buyers, at 
what they are fairly worth, but buyers who are Amer- 
icans and pledge American operation under the Amer- 
ican flag. 

I would not sacrifice the selling cost to cloak a gi- 
gantic subsidy. Suppose these ships have cost two 
and a half billions — it will be more — and suppose we 
sold at forty per cent, off, there would be a hidden sub-- 
sidy of a billion dollars. That would be burdening ex- 
cessively the people of to-day to pay for a development 
that must bless the next generation. No subsidy ever 
proposed exceeded eight millions a year. 



196^ REDEDICATING AMERICA 



BELIEVES IN GOVERNMENT AID 

I believe in government aid, in subsidy or subven- 
tion. But I want it in the open, and on the square. 
We have the LaFoUette seaman's act, providing work- 
ing conditions — and attending wages — which no other 
seamen in all the world enjoy. Let us accept it as the 
conscience of America, and frankly admit that it han- 
dicaps American shipping in world competition. No 
use to dodge the issue. To deal fairly then we must 
extend a fostering government aid to make up the dis- 
advantage. There isn't any sentiment in world compe- 
tition. If we fix standards for Americans on the sea, 
it is our business to help maintain them. 

A few years ago, the Senate Committee on Com- 
merce was conferring v/ith the distinguished Democrat 
who then headed the shipping board. The problem of 
maintaining our merchant ships on the Pacific was un- 
der consideration, and I asked this opponent of Re- 
publican policies what chance our ships had of outrid- 
ing Oriental competition. "None in the world, without 
federal aid," he replied, "and in saying it I contra- 
dict all I have said in thirty years' opposition to any 
subsidy plan." 

We may speak sincerely in favoring a reformed sys- 
tem of conducting the government's business afifairs. 
Call it the budget system or call it applied common 
sense, we need the change which either contemplates. 
Perhaps we might call a budget commission the federal 
treasury guard, and it does need guarding, my coun- 
trymen. Everybody wants a pull at the seemingly in- 
exhaustible abundance in Uncle Sam's strong box, and 



THE PARTY AND AMERICA 197 

the revelation of the possible returns from excess 
profits taxes and income surtaxes has excited genius 
to new ways of expenditure. We must call a halt. We 
prostitute with profligacy on the one hand and burden 
to paralysis on the other. The whole scheme of fed- 
eral taxation and expenditure needs intelligent and 
businesslike revision, and waste must stop for de- 
cency's sake and extravagance must end for the coun- 
try's sake. 

Ours not ungrateful republic 

I hav6 not thought to cover all the points in a Re- 
publican covenant for 1920. There will, of course, be 
a grateful and conscientious mindfulness for the vet- 
erans of the world war. Ours shall be no ungrateful 
republic. We shall go on, not alone promising the 
government's full part in the uplift of humanity at 
home, but perform in good conscience. We mean to 
progress and be progressive. Nobody thinks of reac- 
tion, but it is good to keep our feet on earth and cling 
to the wisdom of experience as well as quaff the cup 
of experiment. We have proven the capacity of the 
Republican party to restore, to preserve, to advance, 
to exalt. The country has turned to us before, and 
never appealed in vain. I know our answer in the con- 
test before us will be a new reverence for the Constitu- 
tion, a new consecration to one hundred per cent. 
Americanism, renewed assurance of American oppor- 
tunity, renewed pledges of representative popular gov- 
ernment, and guaranteed preservation of nationality, 
held secure under the supremacy of law and depend- 
able American public opinion. 



CHAPTER Xiy 

.The Problems of Business 

Address before the Providence Chamber of Commerce 
at Providence, Rhode Island, February 25, 1^20 

Nothing surpasses the romance in the evolution of 
American manufacturing. I am thinking of farm man- 
ufacturing as well as the shop. The farmer who turns 
soil and moisture and sunshine into food is no less a 
manufacturer than he who turns wool or cotton into 
fabrics or iron ore into a steel watch spring. And 
their interests are mutual, no matter how their methods 
may vary, and the good fortune of both is highly es- 
sential to the welfare of our common country. 

Farm production and the manufacture of products 
by skilled artisans were relatively simple in earlier 
days. The age of machinery and quantity production 
wrought the transformation in both. It wrought com- 
plexity and inter-dependence, and inevitably govern- 
ment became involved. 

EVOLUTION OF MODERN BUSINESS 

There was an independence when the farmer spun 
his own cloth, and tanned his own hides, and made his 
own soap and packed his own meats, an independence 
no longer experienced except in communities far re- 
moved from trade. 

198 



THE PROBLEMS OF BUSINESS 199 

There was a phase to the activities of the individual 
and self-reliant craftsman, with a soul in his work, 
which has been lost in the evolution. There are, of 
course, compensations for the losses involved, but the 
inspirations of fifty years ago might well be recalled. 
Some few years ago, in a far-off fishing village in Can- 
ada, I called on the boot-maker, who was the one con- 
spicuous manufacturer of his community. The foot- 
wear of quantity production had not found favor in 
that primitive spot. He told me he made boots for 
customers thirty miles away, and I liked his boast that 
he "made the best boots in all Canada." He had pride 
in his workmanship. 

I delight to recall the village days when the local 
blacksmith, often a philosopher and ever interesting as 
a gossip, turned out his own make of wagon or car- 
riage, and the fame of his excellence was his chief 
compensation. We have lost much of that spirit in 
these modern days. Specialized skill of to-day un- 
doubtedly surpasses all previous attainment, but the 
spirit of superior endeavor is lost to the mass of work- 
men in modern complexity. 

It is not true that we have wholly sacrificed quality 
for quantity, but we have sacrificed much of pride in 
individual endeavor. One of the supreme compensa- 
tions in life is pride in a thing done. We never shall 
know again the wide-spread individual pride in the 
work wrought, but we shall have a new spirit and 
more of contentment in America if somehow we can 
add the compensation of pride to the wage that is paid. 



200 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

AMERICA GREATEST PRODUCEBL 

It IS gratifying to say American manufacture pro- 
duces most largely in all the world. But we never 
shall know the supreme heights until we can boast 
truly that American manufacture is the best in the 
world. In many lines we do excel, and we rejoice 
thereat. But it is still a very common experience to 
ask for the best in shop or salesroom, and find our- 
selves pricing an imported product. I want to hail 
the day when any purchaser seeks the best he is sure 
to be offered an American product. 

Not so very far from Providence, a few months ago, 
I visited a factory in a line of production in which my 
own state of Ohio is conspicuous, and in which Hne 
France and England are famous for their excellence. 
There was a most unusual spirit in this American plant, 
and I talked with workmen to get its meaning. "Oh, 
sir," said one employee, "this is a fine shop in which 
to work. We are resolved to surpass the world, and 
we are doing it." Later on I caught the reflex from 
the directing head. I had seen the wares and paid my 
tribute of admiration. When I remarked that we had 
seemingly larger plants in my own state, he said simply 
but with inspiriting pride : "Oh, yes ! Immensity is not 
our goal. I felt America ought to rival if not excel 
Old- World production, and we are proving it. That's 
our glory." 

^ ^ WORKMEN NOT MERE MACHINES 

My point is that the workmen in that shop were not 
mere cogs in a great wheel of industry, but were liv- 
ing, vital, aspiring agencies in an American triumph, 
who shared the pride in the achievement wrought. 



JHE PROBLEMS OF BUSINESS 201 

I have cited it before, but am tempted to repeat — In 
the very midst of appeals to our treasury for generous 
loans, one appealing nation in Europe was proposing 
to loan thirty millions to a South American state, with 
the avowed purpose of favoring the trade relations. I 
do not criticize the European state, I cite the instance 
to remind ourselves of the importance now and ever of 
thinking of America first. 

I would Hke to drive home the truth of the larger 
sponsorship of the captain of industry of to-day for 
the weal or woe of every community. In the com- 
plexity of modern development we have the grouped 
activity, and the inter-dependence of the many in col- 
lective endeavor. In olden days a producer could stop 
without halting the great procession. Nowadays the 
paralysis of one group hinders the whole. 

HUMANISM SHOULD BE DEVELOPED 

Conditions have been evolved where the tendency is 
to get away from the human side, when it ought to be 
more intimately considered. That is why business has 
been brought into closer contact with government, 
though business itself has inherited a freedom from 
the very beginning of civilization. 

Government has been called to halt monopoly, and 
strike at assumed privilege, and end exploitation. 
Some times it has gone too far in interference, but 
there had to be a commanding voice in opposition to 
greed and greed's unmindfulness. The disappointment 
has been in the tendency to punish the offending while 
seeking out those who really offended. And into the 



202 REDEDICATING AMERICA ' 

well-meant effort to effect through government what 
individual conscience refused to do, has come the in- 
trusion of socialist and revolutionist in government 
interference, until government itself has come to need 
reformation to rid it of reformers. The greatest men- 
ace in America to-day comes from those who have 
crept into service in the name of patriotism and seek 
in positions of authority to undermine the system 
which has made us what we are. I believe the repub- 
lic is more endangered by the invasion of public service 
by the peaceful socialist than it is threatened by the 
radical who seeks destruction by force. 

MANY COMMISSIONS USELESS 

Countless inspections and endless reports, and ex- 
pert interference are not so much designed to improve 
as they are calculated to destroy. It is my observation 
that a righteous law is more effective and far less 
costly than a score of commissions, and no factor in 
American life is so responsive to law's requirements 
as industry and commerce. 

No one is so menacing to material success and its at- 
tending human progress as the fine theorist who never 
trimmed a lamp of experience. No man has a good 
right to criticize business until he knows something 
about it. No theorizing agent of government or prog- 
ress is fitted to prescribed rules of manufacture until 
he has learned the ways of production from experi- 
ence and trod the paths of pay rolls and paid other ob- 
ligations. If government is to be insistent on direct- 
ing business, it must have somebody connected with its 
activities who knows about business. 



THE PROBLEMS OF BUSINESS 203 

I do not mean that business should dominate gov- 
ernment. No class, no group in the republic shall 
dominate the government. Nor need business expect 
special privilege. It deserves a square deal, no more, 
no less, and that is the inviolable right of everybody 
under the Constitution. But I know of no reason why 
business or manufacturing success should make a man 
ineligible to advise or to serve in a befitting govern- 
ment capacity. On the other hand, a success in one 
endeavor doesn't prove a man's infallible capacity. 
Many a dollar-a-year man came to government aid in 
patriotic fervor, and wasn't worth one-half his cost. 

TOO MUCH REGULATION 

We shackled, regulated, restrained, reproved and 
revised during the war, and it was accepted as a war 
necessity, but now we are at peace, actual peace if not 
formal peace, and it is time to unshackle. We need 
vastly more production than we do regulation, and we 
need the restored freedom of business and men. 

There will be no return to pre-war conditions in in- 
dustry or commerce. The world has been in upheaval. 
For us the rutted paths of trade have been wiped out 
and new avenues await. Old industrial proportions 
have been effaced, and capital and workmen are facing 
a new order. The larger wage will abide — it has been 
the legacy of war since our republic began. If there 
comes with the larger compensation to workmen not 
only restored but enhanced efficiency, it will mark a 
splendid advancement. Without the added efficiency 
it will prove a backward step. 



204 REDEDICATING AMERICA 



MINIMIZED PRODUCTION DESTRUCTIVE 

Minimized production is only a little less destructive 
than acquirement through force and seizure, and the 
heresy of life and ease, without work, challenges the 
very fundamentals of human life and achievement. 
Let Russia make her experiment in soviet democracy. 
The tragedy is deepened by the abridgement of liberty, 
and the end of security, but her masses are driven so 
hard and for such long hours that they haven't the 
time to realize it. Her great experiment has failed in 
every attempt in all recorded history, and will fail 
again, because it ignores the gift of genius, the might 
of industry and the power of thrift. 

Meanwhile it is ours to cling to that which has made 
us what we are. We mean to preserve liberty, and lib- 
erty's highest gift is opportunity. Ours is equal op- 
portunity to all men and reward according to merit. 
It is the underlying foundation of industrial America. 
Its inspiration led us in outstripping the world in in- 
dustrial development and founded a commerce which 
America may becomingly boast. 

I want the government to preserve it, and bid the 
sons of this republic to go on to achievement. Oppor- 
tunity and protection in righteous acquirement was a 
covenant of the fathers, and I want the nation to pre- 
serve the contract made in the American beginning. 

Keeping contracts is one of the higher functions of 
government and men. Kept contracts between nations 
would have made the world war impossible. Kept con- 
tracts ought to be the guaranty of industrial peace. 



THE PROBLEMS OF BUSINESS 205 



COLLECTIVE BARGAINING FAVORED 

I believe in the collective bargaining of workmen, 
so long as it does not deny any American the fulness 
of his freedom. But the bargain must be binding on 
all parties to the contract. In the evolution of indus- 
trial conditions that must be established. More, the 
government which thinks of America first will seek 
the establishment of some great and just tribunal at 
home which will end all conflict in production and 
distribution, which will make sure of full justice and 
make paralysis impossible, and that act alone will con- 
tribute more to world peace and world advancement 
than any dream of internationalism and attending 
American sponsorship for Old- World troubles. 

INCREASED PRODUCTION NEEDED 

Production is the call of the world to-day. It is 
the one, and only one agency, of world restoration. 
Out of production in the fields and farms, out of 
manufacture in the workshop, out of wealth in the 
mines must come the correction of empty purses and 
depleted treasuries of European peoples. It will be 
the supreme conflict of peace for the needed recovery. 
Self-preservation will impel. There is no need to re- 
strict or destroy at home. We shall play the big Amer- 
ican part by adding to our power and widening our in- 
fluence and continuing our development, under the se- 
curities of representative popular government, and 
prove to the world that liberty lies in the supremacy 
of law, and orderly government is humanity's best in- 
heritance. 



CHAPTER XV 

The Excess Profits Tax 

'Address in the United States Senate, Feb- 
ruary 2^, I^iy 

It has not been my thought at any time, Mr. Presi- 
dent, to cry out against placing the just burdens of 
taxation on the wealth of the land. I do not know that 
wealth, corporate or individual, has been more clamor- 
ous in the cause of preparedness than any other ele- 
ment in our American life. I do not think it has more 
at stake. I do know from personal observation that 
those who represent both corporate and individual 
wealth are ever ready to bear their just burdens of tax- 
ation; and it goes without the saying that corporate 
wealth is the most available we have to reach in the 
normal processes of taxation, particularly by the state 
or local subdivision. Its tangible property is as readily 
reached as any other, and in the modern processes of 
reporting corporate possessions its tangible holdings 
are made more evident than that of any individual 
holder. So, then, in the normal processes of collecting 
taxes wealth encounters its just burdens under the 
ordinary procedure. 

HEAVY TAX BURDEN NECESSARY 

In recent years there has grown up a process of 
adding extra tax burdens, some of which I have no 
desire to complain against. I think most of them have 

206 



THE EXCESS PROFITS TAX 207 

been accepted without complaint, and if it were neces- 
sary to provide for the national defense, or if it were 
necessary in a time of emergency to meet the vast 
extraordinary expenditures incident to war, I believe 
there would be no serious complaint at the most 
extraordinary proposal made in the pending bill. 

But I am objecting to it, Mr. President, as I stated 
yesterday, first, because it is unnecessary; second, 
because it is class taxation, and very unfair and danger- 
ous as well; and third, because it is utterly imprac- 
ticable to make a just imposition and collection of the 
taxes. 

WHAT CONSTITUTES REAL CAPITAL 

For the moment, that section which has been passed 
over in the consideration of the Committee of the 
Whole I want to revert to. I refer to the conflict made 
manifest in our legislation regarding what constitutes 
the real capital of a corporation. Last September, 
when we passed a revenue act levying corporations 
throughout the land, we provided not only in the law, 
but in the administration of it, since, that a fair value 
of capital stock should be the value of the stock itself, 
and the surplus and undivided profits. The Inter- 
nal Revenue Department, in securing the necessary 
statements for the levying of this tax, has passed a 
rule that certain intangibles shall be included in the 
assets of the corporations in order to fix the value on 
which it must pay this tax. 

I alluded yesterday to the fact that the statement 
required of a corporation calls for monthly quotations 



208 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

of the market value of the stock. I think it is manifest 
to such senators as are interested in the subject that 
one can not dependably fix the value of a stock by the 
market quotations. There are sometimes outside in- 
fluences that give a momentary value to capital stock 
that is quite out of proportion to its real value. I 
need not enumerate the various influences which may 
bring about such a situation, and it would be very diffi- 
cult for any government agency to undertake to assess 
or fix a valuation on the various stocks of the cor- 
porate organizations of this land b}^ means of market 
quotations, and any process of valuation would be even 
more difficult. 

Noting that perfectly impossible undertaking, I have 
wished to suggest to the sponsors for this bill that 
they provide an amendment and say if we are to have 
this eight per cent, tax on the profits in excess of eight 
per cent, on the capital stock, the amount of capital of 
the institution shall be accepted in accordance with the 
representation of its value made under the revenue act 
of last September. Surely the government does not 
expect one line of reporting putting a high valuation 
on the assets of a corporation for the purpose of col- 
lecting a tax on the stock issued, and then reverse its 
policy and put a low valuation on the capital stock 
in order to minimize the exemption from the excess 
profits tax. 

I am repeating this point which I hope in some way 
unknown to me will reach the ears of the sponsors 
for this bill. It would be a fair and perfectly logical 
thing to do, and would eliminate from the proposed 



THE EXCESS PROFITS TAX 209 

law the uncertainties and the unending conflict of 
fixing a value upon which there shall be exemptions 
from the proposed tax. 

LOOKING FORWARD TO PEACE 

Mr. President, I do not mean to revert again to a 
thing that is so much in my mind, namely, the avoid- 
ance of a measure like this if the party to which I 
belong were able to write the revenue laws. I am 
very well aware that neither Congress nor the public 
is deeply interested just now in a tariff discussion. 
About the only thing that awakens our lively interest 
is something relating to the great world conflict which 
is now raging, and the possible involvement of our 
own nation. It is a rather prosy thing to discuss so 
selfish and materialistic a proposition as the industrial 
and business interests of our own country. But never- 
theless, Mr. President, unless the world has gone hope- 
lessly mad there must soon come an end to this conflict, 
and whatever may be the result in the adjustment of 
peace, there must come the after-conflict which grows 
out of the ambitions and rivalries of commercial and 
industrial nations. 

Marked as must be the anxiety of the allied powers 
on whose commerce the submarine warfare is now 
being waged without mercy or consideration, anxious 
as must be the European nations which are involved 
in this unspeakable conflict, it is a fact nevertheless, 
Mr. President, that throughout the anxieties and trials 
there is being given serious thought to what must be 
the industrial and commercial aftermath. 

I was very much interested to read, not very long 



210 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

since, a statement by Lloyd George that no matter how 
enormous must be the figures which represent the cost 
of the conflict to Great Britain, the people of England 
were in a large part compensated by the industrial 
awakening which has come through the war, that they 
had scrapped their antiquated methods, they had in- 
stilled a new spirit and developed new strength in 
their industrial enterprises, and that they were better 
prepared on that account to enter the conflicts of the 
peace of the world which are to come, much better 
fitted to reestablish themselves than they were to hold 
their own before the war came. 

BUSINESS SHOULD BE ENCOURAGED 

Only within a day or two I was very much interested 
to read that aside from the spiritual awakening of 
France and a rebirth of patriotism in that country, 
there was compensation in the war in that it had 
brought new application, new concern, and new de- 
velopment in the industrial resources of France, so 
that France, too, is looking forward hopefully to its 
part in the conflicts or the contests of peace which are 
to come after the war. 

I need not speak of the policy of the industrial pre- 
paredness of the Imperial Government, or the h 1 
rather, of Germany. The wonderful development 
of Germany has made it the most formidable com- 
mercial rival of the United States that we had, and I 
think it is not unfair to say that the formidable char- 
acter of the German development had its part in bring- 
ing about the war which is now waging. 

These contemplations, Mr. President, lead me to 



JHE EXCESS PROFITS TAX 211 

the point I am seeking to make, namely, that instead 
of penalizing organized efforts in the United States 
under corporate form, instead of levying an unjust 
burden on success in this country, it would be well 
for these United States even now, when the mind of 
the world is focused on war, to give a thought to the 
promotion of our own preparedness for the contests 
which are soon to follow. 

It is not possible, of course, in a short session of 
Congress, and would not be possible in the long session 
with the present majority in control, to rewrite the 
tariff laws of this country. I shall not be greatly sur- 
prised, however, if in the providence of political ma- 
jorities the dominant party continues in control, that 
its representatives may be forced to rewrite the tariff 
laws of the country. But I recognize the impossibility 
at this session of securing a revision. I regret that the 
party to which I belong can offer nothing constructive 
at this time as a substitute for the pending measure. 

FOREIGN PRODUCER SHOULD ASSIST 

But I have said the essential thing, Mr. President, 
that under the Republican policy of protection along 
lines of duties which existed under the last Republican 
protective measure we would be collecting on the 
present imports of the United States of America 
essentially a quarter of a billion dollars more than we 
collect under existing laws. In my judgment it would 
be a wise policy to put that burden of a quarter of a 
billion on the foreign producer who seeks the Ameri- 
can market and take oif, or rather hold from, the 
American producer the quarter of a billion tha^ is 



212 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

proposed to be put on him as a class tax under the 
enactment of this law. 

Mr. President, I was very much interested when I 
first came to the Senate, some fifteen months ago, to 
hear the discussion which took place at the time re- 
lating to the extension of the so-called war emergency- 
tax. I was very greatly impressed by a remark made 
by the junior senator from Alabama (Mr. Under- 
wood), whom I esteem so highly that I do not quote 
him in any contentious mood. 

I heard the senator say, Mr. President, last Decem- 
ber, in defense of the tariff measure which bears his 
name, that we, meaning the Democratic party or the 
majority in Congress, had enacted a bit of legislation 
which has taken the burdens of taxation from the 
backs of the people who are less able to bear them, and 
have put those burdens on those who are best fitted to 
bear them. I assume that the latter statement makes 
reference to the income tax, with which, I may empha- 
size, I am finding no fault, Mr. President, but I do not 
accept the statement of the senator from Alabama that 
he took the burdens from those less able to bear them, 
because experience, which is proof beyond all dispute, 
shows that the burdens were not removed, and whether 
war be altogether to blame or not, there has been a 
constant increase in the cost of the necessities of life, 
not only during the pending war but for many months 
prior to its outbreak. 

PROTECTIVE TARIFF NEEDED 

I do not believe, Mr. President, that it is within the 
genius of any statesman who ever lived to reduce the 



,THE EXCESS PROFITS TAX 213 

cost of living by any reduction of the tariff. You can 
never reduce the cost of living except as you reduce 
capacity to live. So, then, if I may bring myself back 
to the theme which I have in mind, I wish it were pos- 
sible to turn from the policy of putting a perfectly 
needless and unjustifiable burden on the corporate and 
partnership industries of the country, and collect it, 
as we have from almost time immemorial under Re- 
publican policies, from those who enter into competi- 
tion for our American prosperity. 

However, Mr. President, that alone is not my point. 
There is pending in this body a measure known as the 
Webb Bill, recommended by the chief executive, de- 
signed to encourage the cooperation of the markets of 
the world. I will be very glad to vote for that measure 
myself. I can see the necessity for it. We have 
reached an age of big things in the world. We have 
gotten away from the time when the individual is the 
chief factor in our productive and commercial life. If 
you want to find the individual with a small undertak- 
ing, who is accomplishing even a little in the world, 
you must go to the very outskirts of civilization. 

I remember last year, or the year before, I was trav- 
eling in northern Canada on a fishing trip, and away 
up on the outskirts of civilization I found an old- 
fashioned shoemaker who was taking orders and indi- 
vidual measurements and making boots and shoes after 
the method that prevailed in this country about forty 
years ago. That would not be possible in the state of 
Maryland or Pennsylvania or New Jersey. He had 
gotten away beyond the contacts of active civilization, 
and there the individual was still thriving with its lit- 



214 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

tie industry ; but in our greater American activities we 
have come to the age of great things, and these great 
accomplishments have been wrought by the association 
of capital and men. 

I think, Mr. President, that that process, if we mean 
to hold America in its eminence, ought to be encour- 
aged, and not penalized, as the pending bill proposes, 
knd I can not understand why Congress will propose 
such a thing. If there were any avoidance of payment 
of the burdens which properly belong to these organ- 
izations, if they were a hurt or a hindrance to our 
American progress, instead of being a contributing 
agency, then such a course might well be justified ; but 
these institutions are the things which make us what 
we are. 

BUSINESS NEEDS ENCOURAGEMENT 

There is not a community in the United States, Mr. 
President, to-day that would not hold a jollification 
meeting if some one were able to announce the coming 
of a new corporate organization that would establish 
an industry in that community. I have heard the la- 
mentation in the city of Washington, this great capital, 
in the press and in certain circles, that one of the draw- 
backs to the capital city, and one of the difficulties in 
finding sufficient tax values to make the District's treas- 
ury show as it ought, lies in the fact that it has not any 
industrial institutions. I have never grieved at that 
myself. I have thought perhaps the capital city would 
answer the aspirations of the American people better 
if it were distinctly a capital city rather than a typical 
American industrial city. 



THE EXCESS PROFITS TAX 215 

The point I am trying to get at is that the Congress 
of the United States, instead of adding this excessive 
class burden, ought to reverse the policy absolutely, 
and seek to find means for the encouragement and the 
upholding of the arms of American industry at a time 
when we are soon to face the new competition of the 
world. 

That is not alone, Mr. President, because we have 
held a distinctly peculiar position ; it is more partic- 
ularly because, through the fortunes of the world in- 
volvement and our being thus far able to hold our- 
selves aloof, we have accumulated the great bulk of the 
gold of the world; and the nation that is able to buy 
offers the inviting market. The contending nations of 
Europe, no matter what the terms of peace may be, 
must rehabilitate themselves, and they are going to seek 
this market, and the ingenuity and the methods long 
since proven and the desperation of the situation are 
going to give Europe a hold on American markets. I 
had rather vote for a revenue system, Mr. President, 
that will hold American markets for Americans, first, 
rather than add unfair burdens to those who are seek- 
ing to hold these markets with their own activities. 
Let us aim to hold them our very own rather than open 
them up to the assaults of the competition of the earth. 

Washington's advice applicable 

It is only a day or two since we were reading the 
farewell address of the father of our country. I won- 
der how many of you caught the significance of a 
phrase in that farewell address. I think it applies to 
the thing of which I am speaking. Washington said, 



216 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

in substance: "Our people must ever be on guard 
against the misrepresentations which come of envy and 
jealousy, for these tend to render alien to one another 
those who ought to be bound in the ties of fraternity." 
I wonder if he did not mean those who preached the 
gospel of envy and hate ; those who appealed to class 
prejudice; those who make their appeals to the less 
successful, who are inevitably and ever will be in the 
majority. There is no help for that. I do not know 
whether you want to question the wisdom of God Al- 
mighty; I will not: but He did not create men with 
equal ability, and He did not endow men alike with 
enterprise and industry and thrift. There ever will be 
these differences, and I had rather do something to 
compose them, so far as I can, than to make an utter- 
ance or to vote for a class of legislation which tends to 
magnify those differences. 

TAX IS PENALTY ON SUCCESS 

Why object to the proposed tax? This eight per 
cent, tax on excess profits is a penalty on success, and 
I make bold to say, Mr. President, that eight per cent, 
profit on a man's investment is not sufficient if you ex- 
pect to have any further American development. Mr. 
President, I am myself an advocate of a fairer division 
of the profits of production in these United States, and 
if I knew how to do it, I would be standing here now- 
advocating some system which would result in a fairer 
division between capital and labor of the profits of 
their cooperation. That is an entirely different ques- 
tion, however, from a government penalty on success, 
and I make bold to say that if eight per cent, is to be 



THE EXCESS EROFITS TAX 217 

the limitation of profits for developing capital in this 
country, American development will soon come to a 
standstill. Eight per cent, money never lighted a fur- 
nace fire in these United States ; eight per cent, money 
never laid a rail or stretched a wire or opened a mine. 
Eight per cent, return is big for conservative capital 
which is in the greater abundance, but conservative 
capital is of the type that picks out a demonstrated 
possibility, and then invests in the thing that is already 
developed, sometimes adding to its increment through 
increased efficiency that may well be applied ; but 
American development has been wrought by capital 
which makes its venture in the hope of a larger earn- 
ing than eight per cent. 

Look at the banker. The average American banker 
is well satisfied with six per cent, on his capital and a 
guaranty against loss ; but, Senators, American de- 
velopment has its chance to take; there is the ad- 
venture of business, and our remarkable development 
in the last sixty years, which is ten times that of any 
other nation on the face of the earth, is due to this 
spirit of gambling in the human being whereby a man 
is willing to take his capital and add to it his energies 
and his genius and his pluck and determination in the 
hope that the combination of these things will result in 
a profitable achievement. That is what has made us 
what we are. 



CHAPTER XVI 

Auto-Intoxication 

Address before Baltimore Press Club at Baltimore, 
Maryland, February 5, ip20 

The doctors of medicine frequently diagnose a very 
common human ill as auto-intoxication. The symp- 
toms are restlessness, irritability, often a disturbed 
circulation, sometimes a temperature, and always an 
incapacity to do things. Auto-intoxication is poison ab- 
sorbed from within. Incorrect or excessive diet prob- 
ably contributes, impaired elimination magnifies the 
ailment. Prognosis is not difficult. The trouble is 
seldom fatal, but it is distressing. 

Sometimes I think our country has a bad case of 
auto-intoxication. Many people urge that our ills are 
largely traceable to the influence of the foreigner. 
The major troubles do not come from that source, 
and never will unless we attempt to digest supergovern- 
mcnt of the world, and there is no danger of that since 
the Senate has resumed its constitutional functions. 

TOO MUCH HIGH LIVING 

The poison which disturbs the nerves and makes 
restless and irritable the American body politic doesn't 
originate in the foreigner who has come among us, 
but you can trace that ailment to the American-born 

218 



AUTO-INTOXICATION 219- 

revolutionist or the agitator cloaked in adopted citizen- 
ship who plays upon the credulity or the ignorance of 
his foreign victim. 

Our auto-intoxication is due in the main to the high 
living and the excesses and abnormal indulgences inci- 
dent to war, when there was little repose and impaired 
elimination. I do not know that I can prescribe tho 
cure, but I know a way to remove the cause. Stop 
the excesses, omit the indigestible things, get to the 
healthful exercise of honest toil, give nature a change 
with pure air and physical activity and take a stimulant 
to aid elimination, along with a bit of practical mental 
science which all doctors agree is helpful in curing all 
bodily ills. 

Break the shackles of war-time legislation for 
both business and citizens, because the war is actually 
ended, no matter how much delayed is the formal 
declaration of peace. Cut out the extravagance of 
government and individuals, give us the normal ways 
of government and of men, and the cure will be 
effected. 

BACK TO THE CONSTITUTION 

It will speed the restoration to get back to the Con- 
stitution, and stand on it immovably. This great funda- 
mental law of the United States of America is un- 
matched in all constructive effort to establish popular 
government since the world began. It made us what 
we are. No one has proposed a substitute that has 
any guaranty of liberty. No one disputes that it and 
its guaranties apply to every man precisely alike, and 
every man in America who doesn't subscribe heartily 



220 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

and loyally to the Constitution ought to go to Russia 
or some other land of tragic experiment. In the ful- 
ness of our liberty he has the freedom to choose, but 
if he stays to enjoy American advantages he must 
subscribe to the fundamental law on which our orderly 
government is founded. 

No one proposes to modify our representative de- 
mocracy. No pure democracy has survived since civi- 
lization dawned. Ours is representative, where de- 
pendable and intelligent public opinion is crystallized 
into law, and political parties are the agencies through 
which public opinion is expressed, and are the spon- 
sors for the kept pledges of public utterance. Ours 
is a government by party, and he who advocates the 
abandonment of the system proposes a departure from 
the Constitution and invites the instability of personal 
government which has been destructive to every re- 
public since popular government was first conceived. 

PARTY GOVERNMENT NECESSARY 

Those who complain at the inefficiency of party 
government are really criticizing the substitute which 
they propose, because every weakness of the present 
day is chargeable to the impaired party system. 
Partisanship can be put aside for a great national 
emergency, when the menace comes from without, 
as the great war has proven, but party sponsorship 
is the guaranty of accomplishment in meeting the 
problems of peace. In the things which were heralded 
as reforms, we have impaired party effectiveness, and 
Washington reveals it to-day as never before. Wash- 
ington and Jefferson were believers in parties, so was 



AUTO-INTOXICATION 221 

Hamilton the genius of the formative period. Lincoln 
was a partisan in the extreme, and it helped rather 
than hindered the mighty achievement which pre- 
served union and nationality. Grover Cleveland was a 
staunch believer in party government and left the 
stamp of the greatest Democrat of his time on the 
progress of his day. McKinley was a notable advocate 
of party sponsorship, and wrought his great achieve- 
ments through party councils and attending responsi- 
bility. Roosevelt was no less an advocate of party 
agency, and when he challenged the course of his 
party he led the organization of another, because party 
is essential to translate public opinion into the laws and 
policies of the republic. When failure attended, he 
instantly recommitted himself to the Republican party, 
resolved to cure its weaknesses, because there was 
no other course to the accomplishment he sought. 

HEART OF AMERICA STILL SOUND 

To alter our political system now, after the marvel 
of American achievement, would be the abandonment 
of that which made us what we are, and endangers 
the republic more than the threat of destruction by 
force. Of course, it will not succeed. The Constitu- 
tion abides. The heart of the republic is right. Let 
the world reveal its restlessness, and experiment as it 
will. These United States will cling to the liberties 
which are magnified in restraint, and hold fast to the 
inheritance of the inspired fathers. ILiving wrought 
to the astonishment and admiration of the world and 
the matchless advancement of our own people in less 
than a century and a half, we will move confidently 



222 REDEDICATING AMERICA; 

on, unafraid, to a greater and more glorious fulfill- 
ment. 

It is ours to excel our shipping of the early days 
of the republic. We ought to have possessed a mer- 
chant marine when war involved us. Ample shipping 
then would have shortened the conflict a year and 
saved millions of lives and billions in treasure. We 
must have a great merchant marine for the future. 
In war's anxiety and unavoidable extravagance we 
builded millions of tons of shipping. It isn't worth 
all it cost, but it is the greatest physical asset the war 
preparation has left us. We must make it the agency 
of greater commercial prestige, the prestige of a right- 
eous commerce. We must take these ships out of the 
inefficiency of government ownership and let them be- 
come the instruments of widened American activities 
and influence in the hands of private enterprise. 

GOVERNMENT OWNERSHIP OPPOSED 

We may as well settle the issue of government 
ownership. It is poor compromise with paralyzing 
socialism, and America will not have it. We must not 
only have the initiative and efficiency of private opera- 
tion, fittingly subject to governmental needs, but we 
need the inspiration as well, and government aid in 
the successful inauguration of the needed lines for 
trade, A government that has expended billions with- 
out heed for shipping need never hesitate a helping 
government hand in giving us a merchant marine 
which will be the highest agency of good fortune in 
peace and is a proven necessity amid the perils of war. 
Let our ship be the bearer of the American message 
of pei^cc and amity; to all the world. 



CHAPTER XVII 

Back to Normal 

Address before Home Market Club at Boston, 
Massachusetts, May 14, 1^20 

There isn't anything the matter with world civih'za- 
tion, except that humanity is viewing it through a 
vision impaired in a cataclysmal war. Poise has been 
disturbed and nerves have been racked, and fever has 
rendered men irrational; sometimes there have been 
draughts upon the dangerous cup of barbarity and 
men have wandered far from safe paths, but the hu- 
man procession still marches in the right direction. 

Here, in the United States, we feel the reflex, rather 
than the hurting wound, but we still think straight, 
and we mean to act straight, and mean to hold firmly 
to all that was ours when war involved us, and seek 
the higher attainments which are the only compensa- 
tions that so supreme a tragedy may give mankind. 

NORMAL CONDITIONS GREAT NEED 

America's present need is not heroics, but healing ; 
not nostrums but normalcy ; not revolution, but restor- 
ation ; not agitation, but adjustment ; not surgery, but 
serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not 
experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in inter- 
nationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality. 

223 



224 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

It is one thing to battle successfully against world 
domination by military autocracy, because the infinite 
God never intended such a program, but it is quite 
another thing to revise human nature and suspend 
the fundamental laws of life and all of life's acquire- 
ments. 

FORMAL PEACE SOUGHT 

The world called for peace, and has its precarious 
variety. America demands peace, formal as well as 
actual, and means to have it, regardless of political 
exigencies and campaign issues. If it must be a 
campaign issue, we shall have peace and discuss it 
afterward, because the actuality is imperative, and the 
theory is only illusive. Then we may set our own 
house in order. We challenged the proposal that an 
armed autocrat should dominate the world; it ill be- 
comes us to assume that a rhetorical autocrat shall 
direct all humanity. 

This republic has its ample tasks. If we put an end 
to false economics which lure humanity to utter chaos, 
ours will be the commanding example of world leader- 
ship to-day. If we can prove a representative popular 
government under which a citizenship seeks w^hat 
it may do for the government rather than what the 
government may do for individuals, we shall do more 
to make democracy safe for the world than all armed 
conflict ever recorded. The world needs to be re- 
minded that all human ills are not curable by legisla- 
tion, and that quantity of statutory enactment and ex- 
cess of government offer no substitute for quality of 
citizenship. 



BACK TO normal; 225 

SHOULD SEEK UNDERSTANDING 

The problems of maintained civilization are not to 
be solved by a transfer of responsibility from citizen- 
ship to government, and no eminent page in history 
was ever drafted by the standards of mediocrity. 
More, no government is v^^orthy of the name which 
is directed by influence on the one hand, or moved by 
intimidation on the other. 

Nothing is more vital to this republic to-day than 
clear and intelligent understanding. Men must under- 
stand one another, and government and men must 
understand each other. For emergence from the 
vi^reckage of war, for the clarification of fevered minds, 
we must all give and take, we must both sympathize 
and inspire, but must learn griefs and aspirations, 
we must seek the common grounds of mutuality. 

WORK IS SOLUTION 

There can be no disguising everlasting truths. 
Speak it plainly, no people ever recovered from the 
distressing waste of war except through work and 
denial. There is no other way. We shall make no 
recovery in seeking how little men can do, our restora- 
tion Hes in doing the most which is reasonably possible 
for individuals to do. Under production and hateful 
profiteering are both morally criminal, and must be 
combated. America can not be content with minimums 
of production to-day, the crying need is maximums. 
If we may have maximums of production we shall 
have minimums of cost, and profiteering will be 
speeded to its deserved punishment. Money values 



226 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

are not destroyed, they are temporarily distorted. War 
Wasted hundreds of billions, and depleted world store- 
houses, and cultivated new demands, and it hardened 
selfishness and gave av^akening touch to elemental 
greed. Humanity needs renewed consecrations to 
what v;^e call fellow citizenship. 

Out of the supreme tragedy must come a new order 
and a higher order, and I gladly acclaim it. But war 
has not abolished work, has not established the pro- 
cesses of seizure or the rule of physical might. Nor 
has it provided a governmental panacea for human ills, 
or the magic touch that makes failure a success. In- 
deed, it has revealed no new reward for idleness, no 
substitute for the sweat of a man's face in the contest 
for subsistence and acquirement. 

SUPREMACY OF LAW 

There is no new appraisal for the supremacy of law. 
That is a thing surpassing and eternal. A contempt 
for international law wrought the supreme tragedy, 
contempt for our national and state laws will rend 
the glory of the republic, and failure to abide the 
proven laws of to-day's civilization will lead to tem- 
porary chaos. 

No one need doubt the ultimate result, because im- 
mutable laws have challenged the madness of all ex- 
periment. But we are living to-day, and it is ours to 
save ourselves from colossal blunder and its excessive 
penalty. 



BACK TO NORMAL 227 



PRODUCTION IS GREAT NEED 

My best judgment of America's needs is to steady 
down, to get squarely on our feet, to make sure of the 
right path. Let's get out of the fevered dehrium of 
war, with the hallucination that all the money in 
the world is to be made in the madness of war and 
the wildness of its aftermath. Let us stop to consider 
that tranquillity at home is more precious than peace 
abroad, and that both our good fortune and our emi- 
nence are dependent on the normal forward stride of 
all the American people. 

Nothing is so imperative to-day as efficient produc- 
tion and efficient transportation, to adjust the balances 
in our own transactions and to hold our place in the 
activities of the world. The relation of real values is 
little altered by the varying coins of exchange, and 
that American is blind to actualities who thinks we can 
add to cost of production without impairing our hold 
in world markets. Our part is more than to hold, we 
must add to what we have. 

It is utter folly to talk about reducing the cost of liv- 
ing without restored and increased efficiency or produc- 
tion on the one hand and more prudent consumption on 
the other. No law will work the miracle. Only the 
American people themselves can solve the situation. 
There must be the conscience of capital in omitting 
profiteering, there must be the conscience of labor in 
efficiently producing, there must be a public con- 
science in restricting outlay and promoting thrift. 

Sober capital must make appeal to intoxicated 
wealth, and thoughtful labor must appeal to the radical 



228 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

who has no thought of the morrow, to effect the 
needed understanding. Exacted profits, because the 
golden stream is flooding, and pyramided wages to 
meet a mounting cost that must be halted, will speed 
us to disaster just as sure as the morrow comes, and 
we ought to think soberly and avoid it. We ought to 
dwell in the heights of good fortune for a generation 
to come, and I pray that we will, but we need a bene- 
diction of wholesome common sense to give us that 
assurance. 

SOBER THINKING URGED 

I pray for sober thinking in behalf of the future 
of America. No worth-while republic ever went the 
tragic way to destruction, which did not begin the 
downward course through luxury of life and extrava- 
gance of living. More, the simple living and thrifty 
people will be the first to recover from a war's waste 
and all its burdens, and our people ought to be the first 
recovered. Herein is greater opportunity than lies in 
alliance, compact or supergovernment. It is America's 
chance to lead in example and prove to the world the 
reign of reason in representative popular government 
where people think who assume to rule. 

No overall fad will quicken our thoughtfulness. 
We might try repairs on the old clothes and simplicity 
for the new. I know the tendency to wish the thing 
denied, I know the human hunger for a new thrill, 
but denial enhances the ultimate satisfaction, and 
stabilizes our indulgence. A blase people is the un- 
happiest in all the world. 



BACK TO NORMAL 229 

It seems to me singularly appropriate to address 
this membership an additional word about production. 
I believe most cordially in the home market first for 
the American product. There is no other way to 
assure our prosperity. I rejoice in our normal ca- 
pacity to consume our rational, healthful consumption. 

SAVE AMERICA FIRST 

We have protected our home market with war's 
barrage. But the barrage has lifted with the passing of 
the war. The American people will not heed to-day, 
because world competition is not yet restored, but 
the morrow will soon come when the world will seek 
our markets and our trade balances, and we must 
think of America first or surrender our eminence. 

The thought is not selfish. We want to share with 
the world in seeking becoming restoration. But 
peoples will trade and seek wealth in their exchanges, 
and every conflict in the adjustment of peace was 
founded on the hope of promoting trade conditions. 
I heard expressed, before the Foreign Relations Com- 
mittee of the Senate, the aspirations of nationality and 
the hope of commerce to develop and expand aspiring 
peoples. Knowing that those two thoughts are In- 
spiring all hum.anity, as they have since civilization 
began, I can only marvel at the American who consents 
to surrender either. There may be conscience, hu- 
manity and justice in both, and without them the 
glory of the republic is done. I want to go on, secure 
and unafraid, holding fast to the American inheritance 
and confident of the supreme American fulfdlmcnt. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

The Philippine Islands 

Address in the United States Senate Friday, 
January 28, ipi6. 

Mr. President — I have felt, naturally, the diffidence 
of a new member in undertaking to participate in 
the debate on the pending measure relating to the 
Philippine Islands. I have listened with that reverence 
which must come to one who is new in this chamber 
to the progress of the debate with rather conflicting 
emotions, until I have finally reached the conclusion 
that one from Ohio ought at least to give a reason for 
his vote, that one who comes from the state of him 
who led in placing our flag in the Philippines, and 
from the state of him who laid the foundation of our 
American civilization there, ought at least to voice 
his protest against the proposed bill. 

We are not moved in Ohio by that fear of the greed 
of the East, as suggested by the senator from Arkan- 
sas, nor is the undercurrent of our dependable thought 
materially changed by the clamorous call for radical 
reformation. I think the current of thought in the 
great Middle West goes unerringly on, uninfluenced by 
either. Our judgment, as I have seen it attested in 
Ohio, is that the United States of America has no 
right and has no reason to extend a benevolent pro- 

230 



THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS 231 

tectorate over the Philippine Islands without control, 
iand I, for one, Mr. President and Senators, mean to 
vote against the pending bill. 

There is a very familiar expression, Mr. President, 
originally uttered by a very distinguished member of 
this body long since gone. I think he was at the time 
troubled with the problem of the resumption of specie 
payments. In the course of his discussion of the 
problem in an administrative capacity, he uttered that 
famous dictum, "The way to resume is to resume"; 
and I want to say that the way to grant Philippine 
independence is to grant it. If I should use the 
language sometimes used on the streets, I would say 
the practical way to grant the Philippine Islands their 
independence is to let them work out their own des- 
tiny. 

AMERICA HAS OBLIGATION 

When the pending measure of the senator from 
Nebraska was first under discussion in the Senate, 
the debate took rather a curious turn, I was very 
much interested in the persistent use of the word "self- 
government." Well, Mr. President, self-government 
is one thing and popular self-government is quite 
another thing. If we mean to grant the Philippine 
Islands their independence, it is none of our business 
what kind of government they have. It may well be 
an autocracy ; it may be a despotism ; they may prefer 
a dictatorship; or they may, and most likely will, 
attempt a republic like that of China, which recently 
flashed a moment on the firmament of republics as a 
sort of triumph of rational over dollar diplomacy, 



232 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

and then again faded from the firmament. What 
business is it of ours if the Filipino people have the 
inalienable right of independence what kind of govern- 
ment they may choose to have? We accepted the 
sponsorship ; and if that is binding, we have no right to 
set them adrift. If it is not binding, the majority in 
this chamber ought to vote unanimously to set them 
adrift at the earliest possible day; and I warn you, 
Senators on the opposite side of the house, that you 
are breeding trouble for the United States of America 
every day you delay doing so under the promises of 
the Democratic party. 

But, Mr. President, the question now on the amend- 
ment pending is not one on the character of govern- 
ment in the Philippine Islands ; it is not what sort of a 
basic law or fundamental government we shall pre- 
scribe for them ; it has come to be the great question of 
Philippine independence, and I am opposed to it, Mr. 
President, for two striking reasons. In the first place, 
the granting of Philippine independence changes the 
policy of the government of the United States of 
America from the very beginning. In the second 
place, it alters a policy of the United States of America 
for the last seventeen years, under which we have 
made the most magnificent contribution to the history 
of unselfish nationality or the unselfishness of nations 
that has ever been written. 

NOT SEEKING TERRITORY 

There is this to say of the United States of America : 
We are the first nation on the face of the earth that 
(^ver unsheathed the sword on behalf of suffering hu- 



THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS 233 

manity. We did that in Cuba in 1898. Perhaps 
some one will question the statement. I grant that 
Congress in making its declaration of war had more 
in mind an act of revenge for the destruction of the 
battleship Maine; but the great kindly soul that was at 
the head of this republic at that time put it on a higher 
plane. He disavowed any intention of the acquirement 
of territory, and literally went to war for humanity's 
sake. Then, out of the fortunes of that war, we ac- 
quired the Philippine Islands. 

Whatever else may be said — and it has been wonder- 
fully emphasized in this debate — our work in the 
Philippine Islands in education, in sanitation, in ele- 
vation and civilization, has been the most magnificent 
contribution of a nation's unselfishness ever recorded 
in the history of the world. If it be true that in seven- 
teen years we have schooled the Filipino people until 
they are quite fit for self-government, then we have 
made more advance for that people in seventeen years 
than they acquired in three centuries under the Spanish 
occupation. But this splendid achievement, Mr. Presi- 
dent, has been lost sight of in the debate in this cham- 
ber amid a lot of fine phrases about "inalienable right" 
and "God-given liberty" and "government without 
the consent of the governed" until I have come to the 
conclusion that the bronze statues of American Indians 
that make ornate some portions of this Capitol, 
would turn their stoical stares to sardonic smiles if 
they could only know. 



234 REDEDICATING AMERICA 



NO OPPRESSION OF PHILIPPINES 

Why, we have never heretofore been seriously con- 
cerned about the "consent of the governed." We have 
not been speaking of it in a century and a third of 
American progress. There has been much recalHng 
of the spirit of the American founding fathers. Mr. 
President, the man who likens the Philippine situation 
to that of the American colonies can find no real 
analogy. Independence was not the inspiration of the 
War of the Revolution. Nationality was not the im- 
pelling force back of the War of the Revolution. It 
was the means of the preservation of independence 
when once we had achieved it. Note the difference, 
if you please. There is no ground for outcry about 
oppression in the Philippines. We were grieving against 
the mother country because of unjust taxation; we 
were grieving because of a denial of our participation 
in the commerce of the world. In the Philippine case, 
if the debates on this floor have stated the facts, we 
have not only kept aloof from unjust taxation, but 
we have been prodigal in the expenditure of federal 
funds in their behalf. 

Mr. President, I somehow believe that the destiny 
of this New- World republic was written by an infinite 
hand in the consciousness of some divine purpose. I 
can explain to myself our phenomenal progress in 
no other way. I can not understand our very victory 
for independence itself unless some master hand was 
directing, yet we have lost sight of that important fact 
in much of the discussion on this floor. 



THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS 235 



M KINLEY NOT SELFISH 

Mr. President, the covenant of nationality led to the 
great Civil War. There is a strange significance to me 
in the fact that our sovereignty in the Philippines was 
instituted by that admirable, that kind, that loving, that 
sympathetic American who first revealed the recon- 
secration of the South to the concord of American 
union. It is significant because it affirms what I be- 
lieve to be the course of our American destiny. Those 
of you who knew him, those of you who lived — as you 
all did — in his time, know that there was nothing 
selfish, there was nothing oppressive, there was noth- 
ing crushing about William McKinley, and no govern- 
ment under him and no government of ours devoted 
to his memory could have such an influence. 

HONORABLE WITHDRAWAL IMPOSSIBLE 

Mr. President, the debate on the Philippine bill has 
served to develop the infinite difficulty of making an 
honorable retirement. I think it is impossible for us 
honorably to withdraw. I think it is impossible, first, 
because of our obligations to the Filipino nation, so 
much interested in the last quarter of a century in up- 
lift work, so deeply interested in the uplifting of a 
downtrodden people that our unfortunate Mexican 
policy of "watchful waiting" was founded on such a 
design. I should dislike to think that we are anxious 
to cast the Philippines adrift because of the mere fact, 
if you please, that they would endanger us or adtl to 
our responsibilities in time of war. 



236 REDEDICATING AMERICA 



COMMERCIAL ADVANTAGES SHOWN 

In the next place, without going further into the 
discussion, I think we can not retire because of the 
obligations to ourselves and to the other nations of the 
earth. I do not wish to discuss, Mr. President, this 
question from what seems to be a selfish view-point, 
but one can not be in this chamber without catching 
the aspirations of the American people. I know what 
is in our hearts. It is in every official message ; some- 
how or other it is the desire of every patriotic Ameri- 
can. Here is a nation with limitless resources; here 
is a nation excelling in genius ; here is a nation un- 
matched in industry ; and everything that is proposed 
in this body is designed to aid and encourage the 
widening of American influence and make us a dom- 
inant commercial and industrial nation. Well, if 
that be true, I want to ask what field, other than 
South America, offers greater attractions than the 
Orient? And if we are to go into the Orient for an 
expansion of commerce and trade, I fancy that the 
possession of these rich islands, the Philippine Archi- 
pelago, will be very much to our advantage. 

Mr. President, there is another phase of this sub- 
ject which I desire to touch upon, and then I shall not 
detain the Senate longer. There is not only the view- 
point of our covenant to the world and to civilization, 
but at this particular moment this reversal of the 
American policy, to my mind, would be the most un- 
fortunate thing that could happen to the United States 
of America. I do not want it said that this great 
nation, aspiring to a place in the councils of the world, 



THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS 237 

that this great nation, which to-day is the only one 
whose voice is heard above the din of conflict in a 
continental war, is so miserably afraid that it wants 
to cast aside some of its possessions to avoid some of 
the dangers of war. I had rather stand erect as an 
American and be unafraid, and particularly at this 
time when, in some way or other, most unfortu- 
nately, Americanism is very much derided in the Old 
World. Contempt is shown for it in Mexico ; disregard 
is shown for American rights on the seas. Why not, 
Mr. President, reassert ourselves, not only confident 
in the possession of the territory which is righteously 
ours, but make it ornate with an assertion of American- 
ism that is befitting so great a nation. 

Mr. President, I have been very much interested 
in another phase of this subject. Much has been said 
in the current debates relating to the dangers of co- 
lonial possessions. I venture to make reply that there 
is not an instance in history where a colonial posses- 
sion proved unfortunate to the mother power, if I may 
call it so, where the national heart was right. 

FILIPINOS NEED AMERICA 

One more phase. I do not believe that it disparages 
the citizenship of the Philippine Islands to question 
their capacity for self-government. I am not always 
sure that we have that capacity ourselves in these 
boasted United States. But whether we have or not, 
the Filipino people have been accustomed to our spirit 
of civilization for only seventeen years. I grant that 
the islands have their college graduates ; I grant that 
they have their brave men, their brilliant leaders ; but 



238 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

Manila is not the Philippine Islands. I grant, Mr. 
President, that there are 600,000 children in the schools 
of the islands, rollicking in a laughter that is the echo 
of our own in these United States, and walking in the 
light of opening opportunity. But 600,000 in the 
schools out of a population of 8,000,000 is a mighty 
poor guarantee of a dependable autonomy. Before 
we think of such a thing, let us not only have 600,000 
children in the schools of the Philippine Islands, but, 
under American education and occupation, and spon- 
sorship, let us have 2,000,000 Philippine children in 
the schools. Then the pathway will open for a higher 
civilization, and with it a devotion to the nation that 
led the way. 

Mr. President, in the determination of this question 
of Philippine independence, we do one of two things : 
We determine to call in the outposts and narrow, if 
we can, the influences of American civilization to our 
own shores ; or we determine to go courageously and 
unfalteringly on, spreading our boasted American 
civilization throughout the world. 

I have sometimes wondered what the impelling in- 
fluence has been. I know very well that a nation lead- 
ing in civilization and in that uplifting work which 
contributes to the weal of humanity can no more 
limit its influence to its territorial or coast-bound 
sphere than can the man who stands high in his com- 
munity, and has the character and the attributes that 
make him an influence in the activities of the world. 



THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS 239 



AMERICAN PROGRESS MUST CONTINUE 

Mr. President, we have boasted heretofore that we 
have seemingly founded the ideal republic. I do not 
know whether we have or not. A century and a third 
is only a very little while in the history of the world! 
But we have seemingly founded the first dependable 
popular self-government on the face of the earth, be- 
cause the fathers had the Inspiration to write civil 
liberty into our organic law. 

It seems to me, if it has been our privilege and our 
boast that we have established and developed the best 
popular government on the face of the earth, that we 
ought to go on with the same thought that impelled 
Him who brought a plan of salvation to the earth. 
Rather than confine it to the limitations of the Holy 
Land alone, He gathered His disciples about Him and 
said, "Go ye and preach the gospel to all the nations 
of the earth." 

Let us stop and think before we alter the policy of 
these United States. Let us not think about the selfish 
side of commerce and industry alone. Let us ask our- 
selves if the time has not come when it is befitting 
to return a vigorous, persistent, conscience-founded 
determined Americanism ; and clad in our convictions 
of conscientiousness and righteousness, let us go on, 
Mr. President and Senators, in our eflforts to fulfill 
the destinies of what I believe to be the best republic 
on earth. 



CHAPTER XIX 

Some Specifications 

Delivered before the Builders Exchange, 
Cleveland, Ohio 

It is a very great pleasure to meet with the mem- 
bers of the Builders' Exchange. From experience of 
my own I know that trade and professional association 
brings together the best individual factors in the as- 
sociated lines, and the association is helpful to every 
participant. The one who acknowledges no benefits 
in the exchange of ideas, and sees no strength in 
righteous cooperation, is too exalted to be of any 
earthly use, or too feeble to add an atom of strength 
to any undertaking. 

It is especially pleasing to greet this body of live 
factors in the constructive world. I doff my hat to the 
men engaged in constructive pursuits. The world 
always has its tribute ready for the builders. There 
have been a hundred classifications of men. Some 
one with keen appreciation said, men are three — con- 
structive, obstructive, destructive. There may be an 
obstructionist here to-day, but it is fair to assume this 
is a constructive company. You belong there literally, 
turning human energies to building, to the fashioning 
of material for the enhancement of the human habita- 
tions of the earth. It is the most important factor in 

240 



SOME SPECIFICATIONS 241 

the human upHft, in which we Americans are distanc- 
ing the world. 

This is a wonderful land of ours. It is so vast, so 
rich, so inestimable in possibilities that there is no full 
understanding. We were blessed so generously by- 
God's bounty that we were and are now prodigal in 
expenditure thereof, but there has come an awakening 
to needed conservation — a conservation of men and 
material. Without discussing, I venture to say that 
conservation is a problem for the builders. We should 
halt the procession, if we discouraged development, 
therefore conservation becomes a practical question 
to solve in the capable hands of builders. 

AMERICA PRODIGAL GIFT OF CREATOR 

A recent trip to the Pacific coast has magnified my 
belief that ours is a land physically incomparable, the 
prodigal gift of the Creator. With our mountains 
and plains, rivers and lakes, fertile valleys and golden 
stretches, north, south, east or west, it is a seemingly 
measureless expanse, unmatchable. There are en- 
chanting wonders in the mountainous West, where one 
breathes a new reverence for God and feels a new 
love of country. One seems to have gone beyond 
man's helplessness, where his handiwork is triviality. 
It is like a great throne of purple and gold, from 
which nature thundered its contempt for man's feeble- 
ness and reared its monuments in mountains as tributes 
to the Creator, wrote its acknowledgments in the 
canyons, attuned its praises to the music of rippling 
waters, then crowned it all with beauty indescribable. 
No tongue can portray the grandeur, and yet, after 



242 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

all, in analytical reflection, the miracle is little more — 
nay, it is even less — than man has wrought in his 
genius and his strength, where he has builded of the 
materials left by creation into works and wonders 
and habitations and habiliments. San Francisco, 
builded anew from the ruins of earthquake and fire, 
is a greater marvel than the Grand Canyon of the 
Colorado, and the superb Panama-Pacific Exposition, 
which is a revelry of conceit and construction, is more 
fascinating than famed Yellowstone. One is nature's 
work in the whimsicalities of varied moods, the other 
is man's construction, directed by enlightenment, work- 
ing to a fixed and exalted purpose. 

What wonders have not the builders wrought ? The 
vehicles of transportation, from a Ford to a Vater- 
land, are the moving tributes to constructive triumph. 
In the cities we pile the sky-scrapers high, teeming 
with living, building souls, and transport the millions 
safely beside or beneath them. We more than span 
the great rivers, we speed the quickened American 
procession by dashing through tunnels underneath 
their waters. Builders have wrought the incompre- 
hensible marvels of electricity, until we make the 
mummy-makers of ancient civilization, though they 
builded the Pyramids, seem like imbeciles at gruesome 
play. This marvelous building age, confident of itself, 
bequeaths its living voice and its strains of music 
divine to the distant posterity we know not of, and we 
live amid the triumphs of American genius, construct- 
ing, which surpasses all previous human under- 
standing. 



SOME SPECIFICATIONS 243 



MAKERS OF AMERICA 

And the builders have done more than achieve mere 
material triumph. Just as the trade guilds contributed 
to Roman glory ; just as the trade guilds of the Nether- 
lands broke the Norman yoke and builded for Flem- 
ish liberty, so are the builders, broadening the term 
to its wider sense, the makers of the American nation. 
No reference to the builders is fittingly comprehensive 
which does not include the toilers, from the humblest 
burden-bearer to the most highly skilled mechanic. 
There can be no limitation of deference to the mind 
which conceives; there must be unstinted tribute to 
the master who executes, but there must be no de- 
nial of rightful dues to the man who drives a nail or 
spreads the mortar or rivets a bolt. There is glory 
enough for all. 

This statement may be applied with added emphasis 
to the builders of the village, the city, the state and 
nation. A nation's laws are its specifications, and they 
ought to represent the best thought and highest intent 
of both architects and builders, but the test of a nation 
is its citizenship. We can not measure by a towering 
figure here and there, but judgment will rest on the 
great rank and file. 

The fathers laid a foundation in the work for 
which they were seemingly inspired, yet theirs was a 
limited vision. There was no Cleveland in their vision, 
because they could not see beyond the ridges of the 
AUeghanies. But they builded in good courage, in 
high purpose and commanding honesty and Time and 
Patriotism have joined in development and expansion. 



244 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

until to-day their temple is the marvel of nations. 
Contemplating this splendid temple of American na- 
tional life, in the exaltation and exultation of partici- 
pation in its making, what glory could be greater than 
the consciousness of a builder's part? 

HONEST BUILDING ESSENTIAL 

One hardly needs to advise a company of experi- 
enced and practical builders how to build for highest 
usefulness and endurance. You know that the great 
essentials are to plan intelligently and build honestly. 
The greatest menace in the busy activities of modern 
life lies in dodging the specifications. No one thing 
will contribute more to twentieth-century uplift and 
progress than the universal and unswerving fidelity 
to contract. In other words, builders of the edifice, 
weavers of the social woof, participants in the political 
performance must be abidingly honest. Keeping the 
faith, holding to the specifications, fulfilling the con- 
tract — ^these are essentials to universal confidence and 
unquestioned satisfaction. 

Sometimes I think we Americans, as nation builders, 
get too careless of specifications. The fathers began 
the world-astounding temple of a representative gov- 
ernment, with the guaranty of equal rights for all. 
A heroic genius of a later generation uttered their 
specifications in simple words which none can mis- 
construe — namely, "a government of the people, by 
the people, for the people." Such is still the thought- 
ful intent, but there ofttimes is a violation of speci- 
fications in the assumption of improving them. In 
other words, v/e weaken the structure whenever there 



SOME SPECIFICATIONS 245 

is taken away the constitutional safeguards which 
have guaranteed stability, and we ignore the plans 
when we seek to substitute pure Democracy for repre- 
sentative reason and deliberate righteousness. 

I do not argue that we are building to universal ap- 
proval, even among ourselves, much less among ob- 
servers abroad. That would be the surpassing miracle. 
Never a creation that some one did not think he could 
improve; never a structure that some one would not 
change. One must not deny the growth of wisdom 
through experience, but only the builder comes to the 
full appreciation of the thing constructed. My thought 
is that we ought to go on building, along the lines on 
which we so notably, thus far, have triumphed. 

CONSECRATION TO CIVIC DUTY 

I can not and will not subscribe to the doctrine that 
all that is, is wrong, and all that is to be will be divine. 
We are a wonderful people, our weakness lies in not 
always holding high the individual standard of citizen- 
ship. If we build to endure, the citizenship must be 
right. It requires upkeep as well as uplift. It re- 
quires consecration to civic duty on the part of every 
man, not politicians alone ; not place-hunters alone ; not 
agitators alone, agitating for compensation ; it requires 
the joint consecration of contractor and wage-earner, 
of directing brain and brawn and muscle. 

I prefer optimists to pessimists, and like boosters 
better than knockers. And I like to differentiate be- 
tween fair warning and righteous demand, on the one 
hand, and loud pessimism and hypercritical outcry on 
the other. Of course, we have evils to correct, always 



246 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

will have. There will be weak places to cure, land weJ 
must do it, and such bodies as this ought to be the 
first to bend to the task. But let us keep our vision 
straight. A flimsy scaffold betokens no tottering wall. 

Stamp out the impression that we are enslaved by- 
commercialism or besmirched by corruption. Let us 
get back to the understanding that business is honest 
and honorable, and success is worth applauding. No 
nation ever has written a triumphant page in history 
which has not been eminent in commerce and industry. 
Our own astonishing progress as a nation is the reflex 
of industrial and commercial development, just as this 
great sixth city is a reflex of factories, offices and 
mercantile channels. Let us understand this fact and 
be for a square deal for the man who does big things, 
never forgetting that the humblest man must have his 
square deal, too, and the big man is biggest who best 
bestows the fair treatment which he rightfully expects 
for himself. 

Insistent fairness and persistent honesty will make 
for harmony of effort toward continued and greater 
achievement. We must dissipate a lot of folderol. 
Perhaps there is big business and there are big con- 
tractors who are not always working to specifications. 
Then we ought all join to insist on fulfillment. 

We are all builders, with the obligations of con- 
tractors to work to the specifications. Men like you 
are more responsible for the outcome than others of 
mere individual responsibility. It is your function to 
construct and preserve, and I am confident fidelity to 
specifications will guarantee a progress in which all 
will share and in which all may greatly rejoice. 



CHAPTER XX 

The Knox Resolution 

Address in the United States Senate, May ii, ip20, on 
Resolution to Declare State of War Ended 

I KNOW nothing in this republic so, valuable in the 
promise of influence for a popular representative gov- 
ernment as the proof of the capacity of Congress to 
function. Mr. President, we surrendered that capacity 
very largely during the war. I voted for that surren- 
der. We were willing to give unlimited authority to 
the chief executive in time of anxiety and stress; but 
while we gave during the war, we are going to be just 
as insistent in refusing to give in time of peace. I 
think America's greatest contribution to the world lies 
in the fact that it has furnished the best example of 
representative popular government the world has ever 
seen, and I rather rejoice in the manifestation we 
made of the willingness of Congress to submerge itself 
in the hour of extreme anxiety. I am only sorry that 
the chief executive of this republic, because of Con- 
gress* willingness to surrender at that time, has gone 
on to assume continued powers for peace. 

It is a very easy thing, Senators, to become intoxi- 
cated with power; aye, and it is a very easy thing to 
be carried away with a consuming ambition. I can 

247 



248 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

sympathize, to a reasonable degree, with the ambition 
of the president to write for himself the most eminent 
page in the history of the world. It would have been 
a very remarkable thing to have committed thirty na- 
tions of present-day civilization to a supergovernment 
of the world, and I can see how the historian was led 
far afield by a very natural ambition. 

PRESIDENT WAS WARNED 

But the president was warned when he went abroad. 
I found no fault with his going. He was not only 
warned before he went by a referendum to the Amer- 
ican people on his own appeal in the elections of 1918, 
but he was specifically and formally warned by mem- 
bers of this body after he went abroad, when notice 
was given that the Senate of the United States of 
America had no thought to surrender American in- 
dependence of action. But in spite of these things — 
warnings from the people on the one hand and warn- 
ings from the Senate on the other — the president in- 
sisted : "My will or none." 

Senators on the other side of the chamber know 
just as well as I do that the league of nations would 
have been disposed of months ago, and this republic 
would have been enjoying formal peace, if it had not 
been for the insistent obstinacy of the chief executive 
of this republic. And so, Mr. President, I want to 
call attention to the fact, more for the Record than 
anything else, that in the passage of this joint resolu- 
tion we are demonstrating to the people of the United 
States of America and giving notice to the world that 
the chief executive alone does not run the republic of 



THE KNOX RESOLUTION 249 

the United States of America ; that this is still a rep- 
resentative popular government under the Constitution ; 
that the Senate has equal and coordinate power with 
the president in the making of treaties, and that neither 
to-day nor to-morrow shall there ever be a chief exec- 
utive of this republic who, in the lure of ambition or 
the intoxication of power, can barter away anything 
essential to the welfare of this republic. 

CONGRESS STILL FUNCTIONS 

This joint resolution will establish the fact, and 
that a Congress willing to submerge in war is once 
more functioning in peace. It will be the most whole- 
some message that can be sent to the world, and it will 
be the most reassuring message that can be given to the 
people of the United States of America. 

I agree in one respect with the senator from New 
Mexico — I was one who believed in some new inter- 
national relationship. I am sorry that we could not 
go into it on our own terms, as we ought, when the 
league covenant first came back. But we frittered 
away our day of opportunity to dictate the terms on 
which we might enter. It ought to have been done in 
the beginning. 

Now we witness the world at peace, and here is the 
United States of America at formal war with Ger- 
many, and there is no necessity for it. There is no 
sense in it. It ought not to be for a single moment. 
We are Hterally at peace. Why not say so; and if the 
president of the United States in his obstinacy refuses 
to say so, then let the Congress assert itself and say 
that war no longer abides. 



CHAPTER XXI 

The Peace Treaty; 

Address in the United States Semite, Novembet jS, 

Jpip, When the Final Vote on the Peace, 

Treaty Was Taken 

Mr. President, I have been content to allow the 
final disposition of the pending measure without any 
further remarks, but I could not well be content to per- 
mit the statement of the senator from Alabama (Mr. 
Underwood) to go unchallenged. I quite agree with 
him that no one can fool the country; and, in order 
that we may make the situation clear to the country to- 
night, when all of the United States is watching the 
action of this body no less intently than are those who 
honor us with their presence and when all the world 
is watching to see what this great republic will do, I 
am in favor of doing what may be expressed in a well- 
understood sporting term as "laying all the cards on 
the table, face up." 

We have been witnesses, Senators, to many months 
of discussion and debate, and delay in dealing with 
this treaty ; and it ill becomes any senator of the minor- 
ity to say that there has been no opportunity for* com- 
promise or accommodation or adjustment. I was per- 
sonally a witness to the long-drawn-out discussion of 
reservations in the Foreign Relations Committee when 

250 



THE PEACE TREATY 251 

we bought in ia more intimate study of the treaty to» 
accommodate our differences there, because there was 
not a member of the Senate and there was but one man 
in the United States of America who did not know that 
this treaty could never be ratified without reservations. 
With that perfectly plain understanding of the situa- 
tion, the committee set itself to work out reservations 
which would safeguard the interests of the United 
States of America and make ratification possible. 

RESERVATIONS ARE ESSENTIAL 

I speak, Mr. President, for one who has maintained 
that position. I have not Hked this treaty; I think, 
as originally negotiated, it is the colossal blunder of 
all time; but, recognizing the aspirations of our own 
people and the people of the world to do something 
toward international cooperation for the promotion 
and preservation of peace and a more intimate and bet- 
ter understanding between nations, I have wished to 
make it possible to accept this covenant. I could, how- 
ever, no more vote to ratify this treaty without reser- 
vations which make sure America's independence of 
action, which make sure the preservation of American 
traditions, which make sure and certain our freedom 
in choosing our course of action, than I could partici- 
pate in a knowing betrayal of this republic. 

Mr. President, in letting the public understand let 
us review the situation. In the Senate there are four 
distinct schools of thought in dealing with this treaty : 
One is the unconditional-ratification school, those who, 
either through their own conscientious convictions or 
the lash of the executive— choose as you will — want 



252 REDEDICATING AMERICA^ 

this treaty ratified without a single modification or res- 
ervation. That is group No. 1. 

In direct opposition is the so-called irreconcilable 
group, those who are unalterably opposed to any rati- 
fication. That is group No. 2, The third is the group 
to which I choose to belong, if I may, who are agreed 
to bring about the ratification of this treaty if they are 
convinced that reservations have been adopted which 
are sufficient to safeguard the interests of the United 
States of America. There still remains another group 
i — or, rather a group within a group — popularly known 
as the "mild reservationists" — those who are anxious 
to ratify, who are anxious to safeguard, the interests 
of this republic, but at the same time desire to make 
the reservations as little offensive as possible to those 
who assumed to negotiate the treaty in contempt of the 
Senate. 

MAJORITY ABLE TO REACH AGREEMENT 

We have had the four groups to deal with, and in 
the progress of the debate and after much discussion 
we have finally come to an understanding on this side 
alone — because on the other side there were those who 
took the position that there could be no reservations 
at all — and have accommodated our differences to the 
extent that the majority has agreed upon a program 
of reservations. 

TREATY NEGOTIATED UPON MISUNDERSTANDING 

That leads me, if you please, to indulge in a little re- 
flection. The whole trouble with the treaty, Senators, 
is that it was negotiated upon a misunderstanding upon 



THE PEACE TREATY 253 

the part of the executive. No one doubts for a mo- 
ment that the president, in that disregard for the Sen- 
ate which grew out of war conditions, in that little 
consideration for this body which followed a state of 
submergence, undertook to negotiate a treaty which 
was his towering ambition, notwithstanding he knew 
the opposition of a majority and in defiance of the ex- 
pressed wish or the expressed opinion of a sufficient 
number to defeat ratification, under the executive im- 
pression that no modification or alteration could be ef- 
fected except by a two-thirds majority vote of the 
Senate. 

He himself not only so stated, but those who have 
been students of the whole negotiation and the after- 
math have clearly seen that the executive proceeded 
on that theory. But it develops, Mr. President, that 
there is still a United States Senate and a majority, 
of course, in the Senate which is determined to reassert 
itself. 

It was all right. Senators, to submerge ourselves as 
members of the government commissioned by the peo- 
ple, as we did submerge ourselves during the period of 
the war ; I was a participant in the submerge, but when 
the war ended and the greatest document in importance 
ever negotiated in the world came to this body for con- 
sideration, then it was becoming, indeed, for the 
United States Senate again to assume its constitutional 
authority. 

It is in that assumption of authority that senators 
on this side in the majority not all in accord, let it be 
said, but senators on this side in the majority — deter- 



254 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

mined, with practical unanimity, that there could be no 
ratification without ample American reservations. 

MINORITY DID NOT SEEK AGREEMENT 

The members of the minority have known of the 
processes employed in framing the reservations. 
There have been weeks and months of opportunity to 
accommodate any differences and to meet us on com- 
mon ground and negotiate acceptable reservations ; but, 
in spite of that existent opportunity and in spite of the 
waste of time, when you on the other side have been 
clamoring about delay, never a single effort has been 
made until the majority has demonstrated its deter- 
mination to submit reservations which must be ac- 
cepted. 

Now, you who talk about peace — ^through our iatti- 
tude in dealing with the treaty, which dealing has 
little to do with the peace already established — ^you who 
are anxious to get this document out of the way, why 
not recognize a situation that can not possibly be 
changed ? 

America must be preserved 

We are content to give you your league of nations, 
doubtful as we are about the wisdom of the great ex- 
periment. We recognize that we are not giving it to 
you in the fulness of the ambitions of the chief execu- 
tive who negotiated it; we realize and regret that it 
must be reported to the nations of the world with some- 
thing a very kin to humiliation. That is not the fault 
of the Senate ; that is the fault of him who negotiated 
it without recognizing that there is a Senate. It is a 



THE PEACE TREATY 255 

very great misfortune, and I am sorry about it ; but 
I tell you, Senators, the independence of action and the 
preserved inheritance of this republic are infinitely 
more important than the wounded feelings of him who 
negotiated it without admitting the existence of the 
Senate. So we in the majority are agreed to preserve 
American freedom of action and enter upon a league 
of nations, a league with such reservations that leave 
us our choice of action, the exercise of American con- 
science, the determination to do that which we think 
is our part in the promotion and preservation of civi- 
lization and peace without the surrender of things es- 
sentially American. 

If this ratification is made with the reservations 
which have been adopted, there remains the skeleton 
of a league on which the United States can, if it deems 
it prudent, proceed in deliberation and calm reflection 
toward the building of an international relationship 
which shall be effective in the future. The trouble 
with the whole league covenant is that it was hastily 
negotiated to be made the foundation of a treaty of 
peace, when there ought to have been a treaty of peace 
negotiated with a league of nations created in the de- 
liberate aftermath. 

WELCOMES DECISION OF PEOPLE 

Under these circumstances, recognizing conditions, 
without discussing the partisan phase of it or any po- 
litical advantage, we have this arrangement, and we 
must meet it as it exists, and those on the majority 
side, those against it irreconcilably, and those for the 
league want these reservations to go to the nations of 



256 REDEDICATING AMERICA 

the Old World to assert and make certain America's 
freedom of action in the future, and leave a semblance 
of a league on which to build. 

If those on the other side of the chamber are agreed 
to accept such a thing as that, well and good. If you 
are determined that a minority of the Senate shall fol- 
low the same blind insistence that characterized the 
action of the executive in negotiating, I warn you now, 
you are certain to go to defeat; and if I can speak 
for one, in accepting the challenge of the senator from 
Alabama, I welcome the moment we can go to the peo- 
ple of the United States on the issue as to who is re- 
sponsible therefor. 

I know, Mr. President, that in this covenant, we 
have originally bartered American independence in 
order to create a league. We have traded away Amer- 
ica's freedom of action in order to establish a super- 
government of the world, and it was never intended to 
be any less. I speak for one who is old-fashioned 
enough to believe that the government of the United 
States is good enough for me. In speaking my rev- 
erence for the government of the United States of 
America, I want the preservation of those coordinate 
branches of government which were conceived and 
instituted by the fathers ; and if there is nothing else 
significant in the action of this day, you can tell to the 
people of the United States of America and to the 
world that the Senate of the United States has once 
more reasserted its authority, and representative gov- 
ernment abides. 

THE END 



